Hurt by the Church

Saying for the day- Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it. ~C.C. Colton
Even as I prepare to go to Church this morning I know there are people who won’t be going because they were hurt by some congregation or another. At some point in their lives somebody in the Church said or did something that hurt them. They may have said something unkind. They may have been judgmental. They may have cheated them in some way. But somebody in the Church acted not like a Saint but a sinner.
That’s the tragedy ! The Church is made up of people. Yes they are forgiven people. Yes at times they can be the most loving people. But sometimes the old Adam shows through. Sometimes they are more sinner than Saint.
I feel bad because the people who have been hurt are missing the joy I find in the fellowship. They won’t hear a choir that sounds like angels. They won’t hear the Word read. They won’t hear a Pastor share the insights the Holy Spirit gives him. They will miss so much of the joy and not even know they are missing it.
All I can say to them is look around. There is a fellowship out there that will treat you the way God wants you to be treated. They will support you. They will love you. They will share the joy of Jesus with you. I know because I belong to one of them.

####News from Pigeon Falls-The little town in my basement where the trains still run, dragons fly, and life is back to normal. It is Sunday and Last Lutheran is back to its original before the tree thing schedule. There are now two services one at 8:00 and one at 10:00 with coffee in between. The Church survived all those people staying there and even picked up one new member. Pastor Joan has worked hard on today’s sermon. She wants people to walk with Jesus through Lent to the Cross. She wants them to see what our salvation cost.
Over at the Methodist Church the ladies are feeling pretty good about another successful pasty sale. They sold one hundred and fifty pasties yesterday. That’s a lot of meat and potatoes. They raised enough to buy the paint to repaint the Church. Now it is up to the men to paint it. The men and Sally Watkins. Sally loves to paint. She hate housework. She hates cooking. You will never find her making pasties. But she loves to paint. She will be the first one to the painting bee and the last one to leave. And she is very good at it as well. She did the beautiful gold trim on the arch at Last Lutheran. Of course she got paid for that. She used the money to hire somebody to clean her house. She’s lucky she married Fred Watkins who loves to cook and makes most of the meals.
Petrovich thinks he has found the driblet he was looking for. Now he has to translate it from Coptic into English. This is not as easy as it sounds since the driblets are filled with strange and fantastic images to begin with. Just imagine that you were having dreams of the future. You were seeing things that didn’t exist yet. Yet you would have to find some way to describe them. But Petrovich will do his best.
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Today's Link-JakeBouma.com- an interesting meme.
It was a very good day to stay in the house. We did get to Church but not many people ventured out. The choir was at half strength or less but sounded great. It was the 50th anniversary of the first service for St. Marks. We sang some of the same hymns they sang then and the choir did the same choir numbers. It was great. Betty took pictures but not many. In the afternoon I worked on the web Page. I put the pictures in and made some small changes. Now I need a breathing treatment.
GBYA