VERY RANDOM THOUGHTS

• SIMPLICITY:
  
• About 15 of us squeezed into my friend Alan's office this past Sunday. He had a huge dry erase board filled with a schedule of worship songs slated for the next few weeks. In the middle of the board I saw **SPLIT THE PRODUCER**. I couldn't follow the conversation because my mind just kept wondering what deep meaning **SPLIT THE PRODUCER** held. I finally could contain myself no longer and asked. Both Alan and his beautiful wife, Kelly, with animated expressions, slapped one hand down on the other and gleefully said, "Split the producer!!!" I knew it! Their reactions set me up for some great explanation. But I learned that it only meant that Alan was considering hiring two people to share the one producer job opening that he had.
• Last night my daughter came in to chat after I was already in bed. She told me that I needed to see this one shelf at our pastor's house because it held almost every book she had read or was going to read off a book list she created. She said that "Pilgrim's Progress" was there, which was of interest because we had gone to the library on Monday to borrow it. I had told her it might be difficult reading. Last night she told me she wasn't finding it difficult to read. I said perhaps I had difficulty because it was a high school reading assignment and I wasn't a Christian and the teacher had all these long assignments that went along with the read. My daughter replied, "How complex can it be? All the characters have names like Evangalist, Obstinate, and Pliable. When he meets Mr. Worldly Wisdom, you KNOW something bad is going to happen." That made me laugh for a long, long time.
• I guess some things are as simple as they seem, like "SPLIT THE PRODUCER", or that the world needs to be rescued and that Jesus is the Rescuer and if you aren't rescued yet, you need to be.

COMMUNION:

Two weeks ago last Sunday, I had communion twice in one day. First at Alan's church, which I had set off to on a sort of pilgrimage to set my heart right with God on a few things. Then later that afternoon at the first meeting of my new church. There was that moment, at both communions, when you are asked to search your heart and settle issues between you and God. I took those moments very seriously. I also wondered if there was a rule about participating in communion more than once a day.

Last night I was on my way to a gathering. On the way there, I saw a man watering his driveway. Now, I did check to see if maybe he was cleaning debris off his drive, but no, it seemed that he was standing there watering his driveway. I wondered what kind of person waters their driveway?

As the gathering was getting ready to start, a bleached-blonde with dark roots loudly called out, "Hey pastor! Remember me?!!" All eyes turned to look at her. I thought, "There is a heart that longs to be noticed." The pastor announced that he did remember her. Then he said that we would be sharing in communion. This would be the 4th time in 10 days that I had been invited to the communion table.

When it came to that moment right before, that moment to examine, I realized that earlier in the day I had left a comment on someone's blog about that fact that I had ended friendships when I had been lied to. A few hours after I posted my comment, I was thinking of a friend who needed forgiveness. And God reminded me of my careless comment. He asked me if I thought lying was beyond forgiveness? He let me know that my comment might encourage another to harden their heart against someone who needed forgiveness. He was right and I repented. I thought it might be prudent for myself and the rest of the world if I just duct taped my mouth. But then I realized that those kinds of thoughts come from my heart and is it possible to duct tape a heart?

• 
  

Anyway, I was pretty happy that God had already taken care of all this before the communion moment of examination. The pastor was reading scriptures about communion and his translation read, "...and whenever you do this, you proclaim the death of Jesus Christ!" Or simply put, we proclaim the Rescue by the Rescuer! I thought of the man watering his driveway, and the bleached-blonde whose heart was crying out to be noticed, and me, the woman whose heart needed to be duct taped....all of us, needing rescue by the Rescuer!

When I went back to my seat, God whispered into my ear, "Will you follow Me?"

"Yes!" I breathed. "With all of my duct-taped little heart!!!"