I woke up on Sunday incredibly excited about the days events. Mission breakfast at 9:15am. Worship at 10:30am. I was ready to go. I got up at 5:30am to put the final touches on my sermon and to pray. I was excited to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. I was excited to go to church.
My Father-in-law, two of my kids, and I got in the car and headed out. We made a quick stop at Starbucks for a Grande Christmas blend and a couple of hot chocolates. Everything was working out just how I imagined it would. Sipping on Christmas in a cup on my way to celebrate the Christ that came in a manger. Perfect.
As we made our way down the road, my picture of a picture perfect Sunday faded quickly. It had just started raining a few minutes earlier creating some icy roads. We began to see cars in ditches and wrapped around trees all over the place. There were stranded motorists on their cell phones calling for help. We drove by with our windows rolled down asking each person if they needed help secretly hoping they would say they were fine. Because we were on our way to church and that was important.
We drove a little further and approached a hill. At the bottom of the hill we saw an overturned car with a man walking away limping from it. He said he was fine and help was on the way. We continued on and watched in panic as car after car crested the top of the hill unaware of what they were about to face. Each car began their unplanned and out of control decent down the icy road that would end up in some sort of collision. We watched as if in slow motion an SUV begin to lose control, climb an embankment and crash head on into a tree. At that moment nothing else mattered. Someone needed us. The mission breakfast seemed unimportant. Unloading the trailer and setting up the church didn’t cross my mind. Preaching the sermon that I’d spent hours crafting seemed meaningless. The only thing that mattered was the people in that car. We pulled off the road and ran to the scene of the accident. Thankfully the woman and her two little girls were all ok. She recognized me as she had visited our church a couple of times, which I think comforted her to know that the person helping her was not a axe murderer or something. We didn’t do much other than give them a dry place to wait until the road was reopened. Then we drove them home.
After dropping off this family my 4 year old said, “Dad, are we going to church now?” To which I responded, “honey, we just did church. What we just did, in helping that family was church today.”
I tell this story not to make myself out to be some hero that swooped in to save the day. I wasn’t the hero. I was the student. God reminded me of something valuable. I re-learned that while going to church is a good thing that obviously we need to do, it’s not nearly as important as being the church. I never want to go to church at the expense of being the church. I never want to serve in a scheduled ministry at the expense of a God-directed appointment. I never want to be so focused on the good things that I miss out on the greater things. Instead I want to be ready at a moment’s notice to be the church. I want to carry out my day to day life with an asterisk(*) beside my to do list that reads…
*This To Do List is subject to change with or without notice
What recent event in your life triggered a re-learning experience for you? Please share it.
