Walking by...or not

My friend, Mark’s blog contains a wonderful account of what happened in church (or should that be “to church”?) on Sunday morning. It contains this paragraph:-

“A friend had walked past a guy begging on the streets on her way to Mojo's and it had bugged her that she felt helpless about it. As she sat reading our church calendar for the next week, she was inspired by the wording of the Sunday morning meeting, got up out of her chair and went and found this young man, let's call him J, on the streets and invited him in for a hot drink and what food we had - some biscuits (ahem, cookies) for the kids and some bread that we were planning on using for communion.”

I wish I could have been that friend – but I wasn’t. I walked past the same man on the street not more than half an hour before. I didn’t read the church calendar for the following week and did not get inspired by the wording! I noticed the man, and I thought vaguely about coffee or something – but I didn’t do anything about it.

I was leading worship that morning and thinking about the songs I had planned for us to sing, the time available for practising the songs and how best to lead the church into a time of worship.

There is a huge part of me that is ashamed that I had missed the very essence of worship which really isn’t about singing songs at all, but about a whole lifestyle that centres on God.

However, I am also very encouraged. Mark’s friend and I meet for a Bible study later on in the day. She was almost floating off the the floor with happiness that she had heard God so clearly AND responded! She admits that her relationship with God fluctuates between extremes. God sometimes appears silent to her and remote. Times like Sunday are times of tremendous blessing for her – to know God speaking, to feel that tug on her heart that she can’t ignore and to expereince a joy from obeidience that just floods through.