Yesterday was a great day at RBC. I am guessing everyone who attended morning and evening would easily have their own ten blessings to list. Here are mine…
10) Hearing evidences of grace from Spencer B., Katelyn L. and Steve Jenks
9) Convincing several people to join me in mocking Dan Miller for using a green pen. Who uses green? What is his deal? What a joke.
8) Those bars with the chocolate and butterscotch and peanut butter chips, topped with coconut.
7) Isaiah 40:20. How humorously ridiculous is this? In the middle of a chapter about God’s power, what is said about idols is simply this: the people who make them chop the wood really carefully so that they don’t totter, wobble and tip over!
6) Being late for second service in the morning. I told Drew that I had to go to Fred’s class for prayer about my trip to Kabardino-Balkaria. I was sure I would make it back in time to do announcements. I was wrong. I underestimated how looooong they would be praying for me. John A. jumped up and started to wing it on some announcements in the service. But he sure was glad to see me when I came running in from the back.
5) Singing the verses to There is a fountain. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day; And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away. The true church knows this about itself. We are that thief. We would suffer justly, for we merited a cross. Our Savior, who earned no suffering, shed his blood in our place.
4) The massive contrast between Isaiah 40 verses 11 and 12. In the former God is stooping to feed the sheep and gathering the little lambs in his arm to gently carry them in his bosom. In the latter God is holding all of the oceans and tsunamis of the world in one hand and weighing all of the mountains of the earth with the other. This is our God — massive, world creating power AND intimate, individual caring concern.
3) Someone at our dinner table is also a huge Horatio Hornblower fan. So we swapped recommendations of other A and E, BBC or PBS series.
2) Seeing all the people gathered at tables Sunday evening sharing passages of Scripture and words of encouragement with one another. I felt this sweet assurance that we were doing precisely what Christ has called His church, His body, to be doing in each other’s lives.
1) Reading Isaiah 40 to the congregation in corporate worship. Yes, a couple of people did groan about having to stand for the whole, long chapter. But, really, if you can read that chapter without either standing, or kneeling, or getting knocked face down then you are not reading it right.