Thank you all so much for sharing in my sorrow as I said goodbye to THAT DOG. It has been harder than I expected. Your words and comments (and voicemails and texts) helped more than I can describe. Thank you.

Okay, on to today!

Normally, I’d post my notes from the weekend sermon. And I wrote a sermon! It was a hum-dinger, guaranteed to change your life and connect you to God in ways that would transform EVERYTHING! Well, I’m kidding about that. But it was a good one.

But on Sunday morning, as we were setting out the bread and wine and preparing to spend time with God (rather than painting, or sawing pieces of old wainscoting to reuse, or trying to figure out what type of sandwich to make for dinner), my friend Pascha called. “We’re at home today,” she said. “Want to come over and do church together?”

We put the glass of wine back in the fridge & repackaged the bread. We spent an hour shoveling our way out of the driveway and went to spend the morning with our friends. It was glorious. A bonus blessing that caught me by surprise.

When we got there, Pascha’s husband Paul pulled out the bible passages from the Book of Common Prayer, and we spent the morning talking about Jesus’ admonitions to stay in our own lane, let his light shine through us, and be salty (one of my favorites of Jesus’ marching orders).  And I was reminded of the verse from a song that I guess was popular 10-15 years ago, but I just found recently. It describes a life where you see God doing cool stuff everywhere you go. The main line goes, “Wherever we go, that’s where the party is!” This strikes me as solid choice for a life theme :)  Paul and Pascha, Gretchen, and (now that I think of it) most of my friends all have this quality. It makes life fun.

Pascha fed us all delicious soup & homemade challah, and I decided on the spot that I also want to be the type of person who has the necessary items on hand to have an assortment of people over for a spontaneous gathering and feed them well.

It was a good day. The basis of the sermon I’d prepped was this passage where Jesus tells us not worry about the things we need in life, but to seek first God’s Kingdom and his righteousness, and all the other things will be added to our lives, too. Dropping our plan to gather with friends felt like step in that direction.