woke me up

Last Sunday at the church where I was working a woman got up to introduce the service. She mentioned how hard it was to get up in front of everyone. I was getting ready to do the kid's spot for the service, so I thought "I feel you sister" as I checked to make sure the construction paper vine was under my chair to help me illustrate John 15:5. Deirdre said that's what she wanted to talk about-- the fact that it is hard to get up in front of people at church and talk. She said while she was planning her talk she tried to think why it was so hard, when she realized--

"My sin. My sin is why I get self conscious. I feel unworthy of being up here. But the truth is that I can be, because God forgives me." She became choked up and had to sit down to read the scripture.

And then a lot of things melted away very very quickly. I was nervous about getting up because I didn't want to stumble over my words and feel silly, I didn't want to suddenly get self concious while addressing the church and then start talking in an unnatural voice. I didn't want to look stupid. I wasn't concerned with my sins. In fact, while I was even planning to talk about my sins and how God can grow fruit out of them, my sin was in fact the fartherest thing from my mind or cares.

Sometimes it takes someone with a really soft heart to show me how hard and proud and self focused mine is. And then I see what it really means to be part of a body. When I hear that passage, (the one about being a body) or when I hear it preached on, I usually think of one person doing maintainance for the church, one making the traybakes for after the service, one preaching, one praying, one looking after the money.

Maybe that is a small part of it, but I think it is only a small part. I don't think the eye vacuums the church and the nose sits at the guestbook. I think the eye shows humility and brokenness on a regular sunday morning and as a result the nose sits and repents.

Roughly related--- so I've had a sore throat and although I am feeling much better now, it was really painful to swallow for a while. I've been in a lot of discussions recently about women preaching and being elders and deaconesses and stuff like that. So the other night I dreamt that I was going to a church that was "really progressive in its views on women and what they are allowed to do" and as I result I was given a very important job--to do all the swallowing for everyone in the church. I profusely thanked the leadership, knowing it was an honor to be given such a job as a woman, but I tensed up my body to get through the first swallow. Which woke me up.