Family Life

Today was our first normal Sunday in weeks. We went to the normal services at the normal times, participating in the normal activities. Last Sunday everybody was snowed in. The week before I was stuck in Frankfurt. Before that I was in Hungary. The Sunday before that we had bad weather and there was hardly anybody at church. Five weeks ago was insanely busy. And that takes us all the way back to February 3, which was quite normal and unremarkable.

Sundays mark the passage of time on an intermediate scale. Light and dark signal the passing of days. Summer and winter the passing of years. A year is a long time. A lot happens in a year, often too much to hold in your head with any degree of detail. On the other hand, a day is too short to get any reasonable perspective on how life is progressing. A week, then, is good middle ground. Short enough to remember all the important details and long enough to see trends (or stasis). Sundays are the heartbeat of that scale, the metronome that sets the cadence of life. Lately that heartbeat has been faltering, irregular. The pace of life is disrupted.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about today, other than having the chance to stand and worship, the opportunity to sit and listen to God’s word, the privilege to bow in prayer, the enjoyment of renewing friendship with fellow believers, and the responsibility of formally coming before God as a family. It was good to recalibrate and bring life back to its proper perspective. It was a good Sunday.

Photo note: intricate tile work on a Hungarian cathedral roof.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 10:15 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated if this is your first time, otherwise they will appear immediately. I reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments.