The Church Lady

Today was Rally Day at our church, typically the last day of the summer worship schedule and a kickoff for the church school year. After the service, we enjoyed a sunny picnic on the grass dining on macaroni salad, hot dogs and Jell-O dessert. If you didn't know my affiliation by now, this classic menu gives me away as a good Lutheran girl.

It isn't always easy to go to church - sometimes I'd rather stay home in my sweats (and sometimes I do...), sometimes the grousing kids get to me, sometimes the sermon is boring. Sometimes I get hit up to do stuff I don't want to do and sometimes the financial commitment is hard. But in all my churchgoing years, I've never once walked out into the narthex, organ music twiddling over the din of fellowship, and not felt my spirit lifted.

For a person often prone to worry and despair, the church offers up a message of quiet peace and gentle hope. Time and again I'm renewed by the good news of God's unconditional love and the gift of grace through faith. Each week I am welcomed as I am, broken, imperfect and straying off course, to be healed and forgiven in a community of like-minded people looking for answers in our fallen world.

I didn't realize it at the time, but the gospel read at our wedding has become, for me, one of the most significant messages the Bible has to offer. I cannot begin to count how many times I have breathed deeply in and out and whispered the last verse below.

Matthew 6:25-34 

        Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to your span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will God not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.