God Watching Day 12

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now." Matthew 6:34a
The Message

The tears started before we even got through the first verse of the opening hymn. Since we process on the second verse that created a bit of a problem. It's hard to walk and cry and sing. But somehow I managed to get myself into my place in the choir. I wasn't so successful in controlling the tears, however. They just kept leaking out....through the Gloria, and the readings, through the Gradual hymn and the Gospel. Finally during the sermon, I managed to achieve some control, only to lose it again when we sang the offertory hymn, There's a Wideness in God's Mercy. It was the words that got to me there. I pulled it back in until the consecration...then it was the thought of bringing it all to the altar and just leaving it, this whole messy, ugly crappy thing, "an offering and sacrifice to God" that just undid me again. I don't know how obvious this all was, the choir (two of us today) is kind of out there for all the world to see, but there was just nothing to be done. I could not hold on to myself here. I have not cried much about this until now. But along with everything else I seem to be hearing this compelling still small voice telling me that I have a job of forgiveness to do in all of this along with everything else that is going on. "God" I say, "You want too much." And my attention is directed gently to the cross. Oh. So that's what God's doing now.