Missing Element?

I was reading over the Easter posts that I have written in the last few days & I am wondering if anyone noticed an important missing element in my post about being a PW on Easter? Immediately after posting it I saw the missing piece & decided that I would write about it after the holiday was over.

I talked (maybe whined) about how busy a pastors wife is on christian holidays & described all that I accomplished on a typical Easter Sunday morning in a small church. The piece you may have noticed missing was the sense of spiritual inspiration one should find on such an important Christian celebration. I will tell you now that I truly did have moments of solemn contemplation & huge exalting joy in these special seasons.........but they seldom happened in church.

I learned as a young mom raising a couple of busy boys that the church building or sanctuary was definitely NOT going to be my main place of connecting with God. If it was, then I was in some big TROUBLE! Praising God & threatening kids do not go well together even though I did try it for quite a while. I eventually accepted that my good times with God were going to happen in my own home while the boys were napping or at school. Our sanctuary times together became less stressful when I saw the time as family time to sing the fun songs, do some coloring, eat some non-messy snacks & maybe do a little cuddling while we listen to Daddy tell people how wonderful God is.

What I am realizing now is that in reality NO ONE should see their time in the actual church building as their MAIN or only source of enjoying the presence of God. In fact, I believe, that is pretty much what the Pharisees of old did, & umm it was highly frowned upon! Our times of gathering are to celebrate what we have been enjoying all week long on our own. That's how I see church anyway. Church is a place to REJOICE in how amazing God has been to us in our daily lives on the job or at school or in our families.

If we find ourselves depending on the sunday service for our strength to get through another week, somethings messed up. There is a wonderful synergy & corporate anticipation that gathering together ignites, & I think God loves to see us all together ready to enjoy Him as a group. But the one-on-one imtimate times are where the true conversations can happen that can change your life in an instant. My living room is my sanctuary & when my boys were little the bathroom sometimes became my emergency sanctuary!! "Help me God!" Ha! My blue & white chair at home is much more comfy than the church chairs anyway. And at the church my coffee cup has to have a lid on it!