In the early days of our church, when we were located on Washington Street, we had a Sunday evening service and occasionally had in a guest musician or speaker. On one occasion we had a musician from central Ohio. This young man was an accomplished guitarist and a bit of a comedian, as well.
We had a few opening choruses and I introduced him. He was about half-way through his concert when he asked us to excuse him to use the restroom. At first, we all thought it was part of his act. But he literally disappeared into the restroom, and stayed there. There we were, 75 people sitting in the pews, and no show. Anita leaned over to me and said, “Ralph, do something. You’ve got to say something!”
Pretty soon he ran back out and resumed his concert, apologizing for drinking too much iced tea before performing. Everyone got a good chuckle out of the intermission.
Sometimes God gives us intermissions that we don’t appreciate. A phone call or a flat tire. The flu or a visitor. These intermissions mess up our plan, and we all want to be in control of our plan for the day. These interruptions just may be the hand of God in our lives. Stay open to how the Lord might want to sidetrack you today.
Tags: interruptions
An interesting thing happened years ago when we were worshiping in our smaller building. Adam was young at the time and noticed that I had a small alarm clock sitting on the pulpit we were using. He asked why that clock was there. I told him it was there so I could see what time it was and end on time.
Later, I was preaching away and wrapping my message up. I was at a quite serious point and just bringing people to the altar call point when the alarm went off on that clock. My concentration was broken as I quickly tried to process what was happening.
I pushed the snooze button and shot young Adam an “evil eye”, but it was too late, the church was in an uproar and the sermon was over.
The moral of the story is if you’re going to give people information, give them all the information. If you don’t fill in the blanks, they’ll fill them in themselves.
Tags: humor, interruptions, time