Monday, August 31, 2020

What We Miss About Church: Congregant Reflections

For our devotionals this month, we asked various congregants what they miss the most about being together. Join us for this series of reflections that remind us of what we miss and who we are called to be.

Scripture for the Day
Ephesians 2:18-19

For through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.

My husband misses music in the sanctuary while our children say they miss the playground and fellowship hall cookies. I miss gathering as witnesses, the infant cooing during her baptism as we commit to be her family of faith forever, the sun streaming through the stained glass onto the faces of beloved pastors as words of praise lift in unison. The mundane and the extraordinary, as much as I love our pandemic technology, YouTube fails to deliver the best of us. While I miss togetherness, it is not the friends whose emails I have and whose names I summon prayers for I feel separated from. Those connections are solid. What I long for are the familiar but unknown people, the brothers and sisters whom I recognize but do not yet really know. I am thinking of a young woman that sits in the back pew whose face I have memorized but whose name I have never registered, the elderly man whose eyes twinkle as our children rush by (no doubt headed for the cookies!). I long for the deep voice of the man who calls out “Amen” during the early service. I miss these members of our faithful household of God. We have answered the call to be the church – present together and apart in uncertain times. I look forward to being back together so I can greet familiar faces in person, learn their names, let them know how much they mean to me, and how I have missed them.