West Cocoa Chat

I’m going to save my “Parking Lot – Full or Empty” post for tomorrow. I want to talk about my church. You know there are times when our corporate worship can be inspiring. You can be in an auditorium full of people and through yours and their worship you can be driven to both joy and tears. If I had to describe our worship yesterday I would use one word – sweaty!

Let me start over. As I was getting ready to leave for Sunday School, Chad – our youth guy, called me up to inform me that some of our power was out at the building. We had a series of bad t-storms roll through Saturday evening and apparently it had knocked a number of trees and branches down thus bring some power lines down with them. Our church’s power is fed by 2 phases, one that comes down the River Road by the Indian River and the other that comes down U.S.1. Invariably the phase that comes down the River Road is the one that is usually knocked out and that happens to be the one that controls are a/c units and most of our lights.

Arriving at our church building I could hear the sound of generators in the background. I couldn’t help but think I hope that isn’t a sign of things to come. Even though the building was becoming already toasty at 9am we decided to drive on and have both Sunday School and Worship. As folks were entering the building we told them encouraging things like, “We’re calling today “Old School,” or we said something like, “The elders have decided to invoke the “Law of Silence” so there will be no A/C today.”

I taught the Adult class down in our basement/ fellowship room and at the start of class we had a couple of lights and ceiling fans that were working. In the middle of class the other phase coming into the building was cut off by FP&L taking out my 2 lights and fans. I looked over at Ron who is a good friend and works for FP&L. Ron could see (and probably smell) that I was perplexed but he answered, “That’s a good sign.”

I’m thinking, “How can ALL the power going off be a good sign?” Ron explained that it would be the next logical step before the building’s power was fully restored. I wanted to buy that but I was worried nevertheless.

Worship started and it looked like a scene out of the “Color (anyone remember Whoopie’s country church) Purple.” If you weren’t fanning with a bulletin you were wishing you were. As we were taking up our collection someone made a comment to Ron who I’m sure had to do with the lack of power and a/c and the timing of taking up a collection. He then turned to the entire church and said, “O.K. family, lets’ really gives well today so we can pay the bills around here to get the power back on.” It broke the place up.

I was proud of our church for persevering and worshiping in a powerful way. I’m also thankful to Chad who was able to end a church service that started at 10:15 at 10:58! Maybe we should cut the power more often?

Speaking of sweating, I’m working with our Deacon of Youth and Mohawks today. He has his own business installing hydraulic lifts and alignment machines. He said we’re working in an un-air-conditioned shop today. You see, the Lord was preparing me for today’s challenge.

Stay cool family.