A Community of Support

And another thing!

This week’s blog is late because, well, because it’s late. Time has been a precious commodity in the last few days. At church, we are between two funerals, and at home, we are in back to school week. If you missed worship this Sunday, it was a delightful three ring circus of a service. We had two baptisms, the blessing of the backpacks, a giant bag of candy, and a whole bunch of visitors.

There were lots of things to love about this particular Sunday at Zion. One thing I particularly noticed was the generations all mingled together. At the end of the service, there was a holy moment where Jack, one of our elementary school age saints, was helping guide an older woman back to the bus to Spring Oak. They hadn’t met before, and she was just delighted to have him holding her hand. There aren’t many places left in our society where we intentionally have every age and stage of person in the same room. At Zion, we do that every week.

Having everyone all together isn’t always easy, I know. The combination of child chatter and hearing aids doesn’t always work well. We move at different speeds and connect in different ways. It is beautiful, though, to see the connections that can only happen because we have all the generations together. Recently, I got to see one of our members sharing stories with middle schoolers. They told him about Vacation Bible School this year and he told them about their grandfather, whom they’d never met. As someone who has spent my entire life in churches, I’ve been blessed to have people walk alongside me who had wisdom I didn’t have yet. When Ben broke his first tooth, I ran into coffee hour and asked the assembled moms what to do. The things I’ve learned about family and life and the world as it is and as it might be could fill an encyclopedia. And the big questions and enthusiasm and unfiltered emotions of the younger saints are guideposts and reminders of what it was to be that age.

Thank you for being church together. Thanks for bringing yourself to worship, to conversations, to living this life together. We promise in baptism to support the newly baptized and pray for them in their new life in Christ. That support from us and for us never stops. We are the body of Christ, all together, and it is a wonder to behold.