Monday Morning Reflections

It’s Monday morning, December 14th.  It’s hard to believe but we are only eleven days away from Christmas morning and seventeen days away from a whole new year.  Wild!  Where does the time go?

Yesterday was interesting.  It began by waking up to some black ice before heading off to church. 

Upon arriving at church and much to the fault of the weather traffic conditions, I had very little time to prepare for my morning including changing guitar strings, going over the music, checking e-mails, and the like.

One thing that I was and continue to be excited for is the opportunity I will have come January to co-teach a Sunday morning series with my friend, Brent.  We are going to be teaming up to do a series on the Sermon on the Mount.  Each week we will work together to unpack Jesus’ words to an incredibly eclectic group of individuals.  I’m super-stoked about it…

 I have been leading worship nearly every Sunday for the past five months or so and yesterday was no exception.  While I really enjoy the opportunities I have first and foremost, to worship God, sometimes my human expectations of self get in the way and blur my vision.  I confess that yesterday was one of those days. 

After church we scurried off to my dad’s place.  This is the first time that my brothers and I and our families have all been at my dad’s together since my parent’s recent divorce.  It was great to be together as family, but really sucked because it is unfamiliar ground to us; so many expectations, yet no one knows what the expectations are or how to go about them.  All-in-all it was nice celebrating my dad’s birthday and I pray for family reconciliation for my mom, my dad and my five siblings as well as many of the extended family and friends whom have been deeply affected by my parent’s divorce.

Last night was pretty sweet.  We went to “Qahal” (Hebrew: The Gathering) at Valley View Evangelical Church.  Several phenomenal leaders helped to make the night happen and I am so grateful for such wonderful people in my life.  The night started off with a full-on turkey dinner thanks to Tom Hurt, Brent Burson and Tim Mroz.  It was accompanied by the most mashed potatoes I have ever seen, salad, cranberries, stuffing, rolls, pie and more.  Each individual table was set-up for communion in which someone at their perspective table led the charge and the patrons of each table broke bread together over their meal.  Hmmm…sounds familiar.  A pretty sweet way of recognizing communion. 

My buddy Garrett led worship with a great group of musicians and vocalist while my friend James brought the message, “Blessings”.  It was pretty sweet how they worked it out.  They did the message and worship in tandem.  Garrett started off with a few songs.  James came up and started the message and paused after his first point.  Garrett and company led a couple of other songs.  James came back up to continue where he had left off and so the story goes.  This pattern continued throughout.  Awesome!

We were over-prepared and it ended up being a total blessing.  With so much food un-eaten, we were able to take three huge trays of turkey, three vats of mashed potatoes, four full pies, two big-ol bags of salad, a 20 gallon bag of rolls and even more leftover food to our local Union Gospel Mission.  Talk about need?!  Talk about unexpected blessings?!  The UGM were ecstatic to see us last night and met us on 2nd and Burnside with a cart ready for transport.  A brief conversation and many thanks and we were off.  What I loved most was that before we even hit the car door the Director was already offering to fix a plate of food for a homeless woman fixing to go to sleep on the street.  Amen!

I have so much going through my brain at the moment:
~Family
~Church
~Ministry
~The Inn
~Qahal
~Future
~Expectations
and each one seems to be occupying a good portion of space in my mind. 

Lord, I pray that you will help bring sense to the things floating around in my head.  Help me to know YOUR will and to walk in YOUR ways.  My desire is to bring glory and honor to YOUR name.  I’m praying for the strength to be silent and to listen to YOUR voice and direction.  Please help me to be obedient to the things YOU are calling me to.

~A. Anderson