Oh, Sunday! Held in the Rows of an American Church Today.

Oh, Sunday! Ready. Set. Gather with the saints once again.  I saw saints with sparkling white teeth smiling at me and I heard the tickling sounds of laughter inside a big ole brick house called an American church today.  I felt the feelings of family and I knew I belonged.

Then, in long soft rows of loved ones, I listened to their sturdy voices rising, snugging me in tight with gathering glory, swaddled safe within sounds of songs swelling, and us gatherers grounding our hearts together in the sacred Sunday morning time. My voice rang out with the singing ones, the loving ones with the eyes full of HIM!  I held hands, hugged friends, kissed soft lady faces, gave high fives, and learned new things--  new things from old places, like an ancient “living” word in a big book with a big binding that binds us all together still.

We are always finding what seems new in the old.  Yes, I am, too. And we confide to a feeling of being yet “young inside” the weathered skin with new, soft wrinkles—young because in this place all remember to open wide as a child. I glance back now, in the night, in my soft bed on the little farm and see myself strong in the mix of it all-- even me, even now.   Yes, even me!  And are we all a little dazzled by the idea of belonging?  Sunday is coming again in pursuit of the prize!  -- a gathering church that knows how to hold one another and then how to hold the world.