by Neil Deo

Created on: April 20, 2008

John, Chapter 14 (New Testament) always inspires and offers new Maps and Routes:

Do you long for those sermons that opened the unseen corners of your heart to a flood of positive sentiments feelings and renewed faith? Could your pastor or miniter always give a great sermon, or could you handle the heightened faith and elctricity from a great sermon if it were done every day? Would that make it more like grade school or a university class? What is our reaction when preachers preach from the Old Testament and messages where Jesus warns us that if we do not love one another, He will not KNOW US when it matters most?

Today, my whole church was electric. Everything that was on the program (two baptisms, welcoming visitors) and some items that were spontaneous (the worship leader's sharing and extemporizing about "leaning on Christ and Christians" when Fathers die) were powerful and inspired. The pastor had hard acts to follow but he was not overshadowed, nor did he disappoint. He talked on Jesus's wonderful words about going ahead of us to prepare a place in His Father's Mansion, for all of us, and that He and God are One.

However, I was thinking whether we, and our human constitutions, can bear the excitement and electrical energy of overflowing faith and excitement more than one day a week. Of course there are many denominations that are quiet worshippers, the quietest being Quakers, Mennonites and meditative sects (Copts of Egypt). However, many others are exuberant in Sabbath services, for they proclaim that worship days are not funeral days: we need to give praise, thanks and glory loudly and as if we mean it!

My reflections today brought me back to variety is the spice of life, as Founding Father Jefferson observed in 1786 (when a former Captain Shays of the American Revolutionary War) led fellow-farmers in that famous rebellion in Massachusetts because the new market economy was making prisoners, debtors and property-less men of those who had fought Britain for independence. Jefferson was able to claim that "a little rebellion now and then" is great for democracy and making our governments more responsive to the people! Neither Thomas Jefferson, nor George Washington, Alexander Hamilton or James Madison especially, would have welcomed a riot and rebellion every year let alone every day.

So, perhaps humans need a mix of quiet prayer and occasionally exuberance and what my pastor today called "African noise" during Sabbath. If one is always loud and communal in prayer and song, one never deals with silences that are aplenty in life and death. I do concede we have different tastes, and hence different denominations, within the same Body of Christ! But, every religion needs quiet time, reflection time and meditation time, to allow one to study one's mind and heart, and consider Biblical words for oneself, without always having an intercessor or intercessory music and aid. Shalom

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