This one’s gonna be long. I appreciate your patience.<\/p>\n
Some thoughts I had this morning while getting ready for church (I went to early service today) and waiting for service to start, now fleshed out a little bit…<\/p>\n
You know, I’m a sad, sad creature. For five months now, I have been living in Birmingham, and I still don’t attend any church regularly here. Oh, I’ve gone to church a few times, but it’s been a half-hearted attempt at best. My excuses for not going have been many, and all of them not good. Let’s examine them one by one. I realize that the counter-arguments for all of these are trivial, but trust me, it does me good to write them down.<\/p>\n
First, the country’s in a recession; lots of people don’t have jobs right now. Second, my spiritual need far outweighs my financial need right now. Third, people wouldn’t know that I didn’t have a job unless I explicitly said I didn’t, and even then they’d understand, given the current climate.<\/p>\n
This is a reason to not join a church here in town. It’s not a good reason to attend church at all. I don’t necessarily have to join<\/i> a church right now, but it always does me good to attend<\/i> church.<\/p>\n Well, first off, this isn’t entirely true. At Dawson<\/a>, where I’ve been going the times that I have gone, I know Ricky<\/a> and Tammy (they just aren’t in the Sunday school class that I’d be in, and they can’t sit with me in church because they’re in choir). I also know my friend Sarah Frey (formerly Elmore) from the MBA Program (ditto on the Sunday school class).<\/p>\n But even in just the realm of a new Sunday school class, it isn’t a good argument. It isn’t anyone else’s fault that I don’t know anyone. The problem with this argument, as it pertains to a new church, Sunday school class, etc., is that it’s a vicious circle. I don’t know anyone, so I don’t go, so I don’t know anyone, and so on. If I had used this mentality concerning the BCM the part of the freshman year that I went (and trust me, I almost did), I’d never have met so many people who are so close to me now. Introversion is one thing; lack of effort on my part is quite another. No one can get to know me if I don’t make myself known.<\/p>\n This is the weakest argument of all. It stems partly from the first argument, partly from introversion, and partly from good old-fashioned vanity. I even considered not going to church today because of a couple of shaving bumps on my face! This is when I had the mental ice-cold water thrown in my face, and when this whole line of thought began.<\/p>\n I’ve forgotten something very key: being a Christian (part of which is church attendance) is an acknowledgement<\/i> and even an admission<\/i> of imperfection. Simply coming to church shows that I realize I need a higher being to lift me from what I am without Him. (Side note: the first guy who greeted me today had a shaving bump just above his lip. I love the way God works.)<\/p>\n Anyone can see that these are all poor excuses. So I’m not going to make them anymore. I might not end up in Birmingham, but until I move off (if I do so), I will be attending church here on Sundays. No excuses. I hold myself accountable to all pressing on… readers from this day forth. I would appreciate any e-mails helping me to stay accountable in this area of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This one’s gonna be long. I appreciate your patience. Some thoughts I had this morning while getting ready for church (I went to early service today) and waiting for service to start, now fleshed out a little bit… You know, I’m a sad, sad creature. For five months now, I have been living in Birmingham, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts-inspired"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n