Mondays are for Super Duper Bowl Ramblings..

Wow. That is about the only way to start today off. I am still amazed by what we witnessed last night. That was one of the best Superbowls ever played. People will talk about all the penalties (there were way too many, some were ridiculous and some should have been called) and the way the Steelers methodical offense took a lot of the steam out of Cardinals for half the game, but we can’t ask for anything more than that.

The Steelers won because they made two of the greatest plays in Superbowl history. (Do I need to mention the plays by Harrison and Holmes?) They deserved to win, but the Cardinals did too. They took it to one of the best defenses in the history of the league. One minor play going differently and we would be talking about the most unlikely Superbowl Champion ever. So hats off to the Steelers. They are the champs. They are probably the best franchise in football, no drama, classy owners, great coaches, consistency, and now the most championships, so they deserve all the accolades.

Now on with the ramblings…

You can feel it in the air

I don’t know if anyone has done a scientific study on emotions being transmitted by air, but haven’t you experienced the reality of walking into a room or a gathering and immediately being able to feel a common emotion being shared by a group of people? You can feel it when a room has a lot of energy, maybe it is the extra heat created by people moving around or the murmur of voices that alerts us, but whatever it is you feel a room that is excited.

You can also be stunned by this feeling when you walk into a moment of tension or grief. There are moments whose exact feeling my body can recall if just stop to think of them. Those moments when you walk in and are almost oppressed by the emotional height of the group gathered. You don’t have to even have known what was wrong or what happened to immediately know that it is all wrong, something is terribly wrong.

There is another feeling though that I have experienced a couple of times in my life and it is the feeling of a place where lives are changed. Maybe these places are akin to the “thin places” of Celtic theology. But there are places and times when God is so powerfully at work within a community that from the moment you get there you can feel it. I felt that the moment I first went to Christ Church. It resonated within my soul, the sense that God was doing something.

Last week in my conversations and times of prayer I was reflecting on the feeling that you encounter when you come into our church. I can’t really put my finger on it. Sometimes it is a feeling of excitement. Sometimes it is a feeling of hurting people. Sometimes I get a wiff of transformation, but it is attached to a moment from the past. So I have been praying about the spirit of our church and our ability to feel the Spirit.

My desire is for our community to be one that is so attuned to the Spirit that when you encounter our people, anywhere and at anytime, there is an immediate recognition that something different is going on. I pray that our worship would be striking, that from the moment you step foot in the door you know God is working and God is present. We aren’t there yet. And I know that this isn’t something that we can create. It only comes from attuning our hearts to what God has for us as a church. So I am trying to get in tune and listen better.

Stop by tomorrow for some linkage for the week…