Today’s Reflection IT WAS A Sunday morning during Lent when the Smith family returned to church. Having given birth to a baby boy in mid-February, they made their way back to worship with their newborn baby boy and young daughter in tow. About halfway through the sermon, the newborn began his hunger grumblings. “I’m hungry, Mama!” His oohs and aahs and grunts and moans seemed to say. So, doing what any mother would do, she took out her breast and fed him. I loved every minute of this holy scene taking place before my eyes. Not preaching that morning, I sat in my chair on the platform, at first listening to the sermon, then slowly but surely listening to the baby’s coos—his expressions of ache and longing, hunger and want. The baby’s voice made worship a much richer experience for me that morning because in a place mostly absent of children’s voices, the newborn child began to sing a song of new life. The child, in his innocent baby cry, spoke volumes. Later that morning, worship had concluded, and several church members stayed for a conversation about worship. I, in a moment of truth, shared with the gathered community my deep joy at hearing the newborn’s voice in worship. In the midst of my sharing, a shaky, older voice spoke up and said, “With all due respect, I did not like his voice at all. It was distracting, and I couldn’t hear the sermon. The babies should be taken to the back.” My heart broke a little, my knees shook, and tears began their hot pursuit behind my eyes as I heard my church member express his opinion. How dare he not think like I think! How dare his opinion be different than my own! Luckily the conversation moved in another direction, and we were done, for the time being, dealing with children and their inconvenient, disruptive noises. When recounting this story to friends in a writers group a few months later, one of my colleagues said, “You know, Claire, that older man is just scared. He probably can’t hear very well, and he sees his church, his family of faith, changing. That would conjure up a whole lot of fear for the best of us.” Oh, so he’s not just mean? I thought. He’s scared and needs church just as much as the newborn baby, the toddler, the adolescent, and me? Yes. Church is for all of us, or it’s not for any of us. - Weavings, Aug/Sept/Oct 2013 From “Water the Plants in Time” by Claire K. McKeever-Burgett, pages 40-41 in Weavings: a Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, August/September/October 2013. Copyright © 2013 by The Upper Room. All rights reserved. Used by permission. bookstore.upperroom.org/ Learn more about or purchase this book. Today’s Question Think of a time when you have seen a situation differently because of a change in perspective
Posted on: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 22:54:03 +0000
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