CULMINATION SUNDAY

Just as Friday signals the week's end, I look upon Sunday as the culmination of the week. It is the beginning and the end. It is the pivotal time of being. Saturday is the time for replenishing my physical resources. Saturday is the ketchup (for you non-Bancroft people that is catch up) day of the week. Laundry, sleep in, mail, read, relax, run errands, anything, everything.

But Sunday. Sunday is the most special day of all. Sunday means church. Sunday means being with God in a corporate way as opposed to the solitudinous way of the week. Solitudinous -- it's a word, an adjective, I just looked it up in the dictionary and it means what I want it to mean. Sunday is the high point of my week. It carries me forth to the middle and carries me forward from the middle.

Church is the liturgy. Church is the people. Church is my corporate connection with God. Church is where Jesus welcomes me to table to share the blessed meal. Church is music -- today it was "I Walk In The Garden Alone." My mother was a Methodist. Her father was a Methodist minister, of sorts. She sang the old hymns. The Presbyterian Church where I sometimes did Sunday School also did these old hymns. The 'garden' is one of my favorite places to be with God and it was a special moment for me in today's service.

Sunday morning church is a 'high' for me. A beautiful, natural, God-given high that sends me forth into the Kingdom to do God's work. Do I always do it? Not always. Do I want to? Yes. Do I try to? Yes. Am I successful? Sometimes? Does it matter? Not at all. What matters is the caring and the effort.