CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith
from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
While
our pastor recovers from heart bypass surgery, I’m filling in. During the
worship last Sunday, not counting announcements and items printed in the
bulletin and hymnal, I uttered, out loud, 6,820 words.
I
don’t write those words down ahead of time. I figure if I can’t comprehend and
remember them in my brain and spirit as I speak them, I can’t expect those in
the pews to comprehend and remember them as they listen. That does not mean I
don’t prepare. I spend almost every waking moment in the week before a worship
service, sometimes several weeks, sifting through the words I might speak on
the scriptures and the subject of the day. For the 6,820 words I finally utter,
there are 675,180 I don’t speak, that are rejected as being unworthy of God and
not useful for the congregation. Only one percent of the words that go through
my brain comes out of my mouth.
The
words spoken are a gift. The words NOT spoken are often an even greater gift.
That is true every time we speak, even though most of us are never in the
pulpit.
Rejoice,
ye peoples, ye peoples of Chrisney and Crossroads and Bloomfield, of Solsberry
and Koleen and Mineral, of Greene County Chapel and Walkers Chapel, of Cedar
Lake and Creston, of Terre Haute Centenary, of Normal First, of Stanwood and
Red Oak Grove, of Orion, of Hoopeston, of Charleston Wesley, of Mattoon Faith,
of Arcola, of Mason City Wesley, of Walnut, of Tampico, of Morrison, of
Sterling Wesley, of Iron Mountain Trinity, rejoice in the 99% that God led me
NOT to utter on the Sundays of the last 56 years.
Rejoice
ye people who read Christ In Winter, in the several thousand words God took
away to the recycle bin so that you would have to read, not counting the
announcements, only 316.
Rejoice,
ye peoples of the world, as we come toward the end of Advent/Christmas, the
season of preparation and proclamation, that God prepared well enough that it
was necessary to speak but one Word.
John
Robert McFarland
***
The
“place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
You
are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge
the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to
folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it
into a movie or TV series.
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle
Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but
occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}
CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith
from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
It
was the Sunday before Christmas. We’d had two good morning worship services. I
was tired. I was sitting at the table in the kitchen, sans shoes and tie,
gratefully full of lunch, sipping a second cup of tea, when the phone on the
wall beside me blared more forcefully than necessary. I picked it up. A rather
thin, small voice…
“Rev.
McFarland, aren’t you coming to our wedding?”
A
minister should not schedule anything on a Sunday afternoon. A Sunday morning is
intense. It empties your brain out. By the time it is over, there is no room to
remember anything that is coming up.
In
over 50 years in ministry, I forgot two events. The first time I was supposed
to be part of a panel discussion for an evening program at a church on the
other side of town. It’s not too bad if one member of a panel doesn’t show.
It’s definitely not good if the only minister doesn’t show up for a wedding.
It’s
even worse if the bride is a scared teen-ager whose family threw her out when
she told them she was pregnant.
I
hadn’t known her or her boyfriend, but they came to me when her pastor refused
to marry them. “People say, when there’s no place else to go, they come to you,”
they told me. Now the pastor of last resort had forgotten about them, too.
I
set a record for retrieving shoes and tying tie, and I flew out the back door.
Helen was right behind me. Mary Beth and Katie, who were teenagers, were right
behind her. Fortunately, we lived next door to the church building, and there
was already a path shoveled through the big snow drift that always swept in and
up between the back doors of the parsonage and the church building.
They
were in the kitchen, the bulging bride, and her skinny husband-to-be, and the
nervous teen couple they had brought along as witnesses. This was well before
cell phones. When I had not showed up at 1:00 o’clock, they had wandered
through the building and found the phone in the kitchen.
I
led them back to the sanctuary. Oops. I had forgotten something else. After the
morning services, we had prepared for the Christmas program that evening. The
pulpit and lectern and altar table had been removed, turning the chancel into a
large Akron-plan wrap-around stage. The chancel was bare.
But
we were decorated for Christmas. Wreaths and candles and red ribbons, and a
crèche set. They took their vows standing in front of the manger, part of a
scene that said, “Love came down at Christmas.”
Every
Christmas, the wedding I forgot is the one that I remember.
John
Robert McFarland
***
The
“place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
You
are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge
the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to
folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin, or make it
into a movie or TV series.
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle
Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but
occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}
I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.
