roller coasters, redistribution, and sleep deprivation

last week was vacation bible school. we registered 115 children and averaged 82 every night. the energy was incredible; we are calling it a huge success. we managed to collect over 850 school supplies to redistribute to families in the community in the weeks before school starts. we also raised enough money in coins and crumpled dollar bills to buy some live stock for families in poverty in other communities so that they can also practice redistribution. (check out Heifer International if you don't know what i'm talking about).

in the midst of that week i had one church member end up in the hospital with a fractured pelvis (not as a result of vbs) and i had another member's child accidentally o.d. by intentionally abusing other people's prescription drugs. he was clinically dead for about five minutes, resuscitated, and is (thankfully) physically and mentally fine(meaning no brain damage) despite it all. the family is a wreck, though.

we also had a parent of one of the children in our summer childcare program gift the church with about 50 cases of cereal. not 50 boxes. 50 cases. so we began the art of redistribution. took about 8 cases to another church that has a summer lunch program for the community--they also redistribute the food given to them to the families that come to eat lunch. took another 8-10 cases to another local church's childcare center. i think she was expecting 8 to 10 boxes because she looked ready to cry when i started off loading 8 to 10 cases of cereal. when this happens i sometimes think that God is saying to us that food is part of what we're supposed to being doing.

but as i was driving around town sharing food and trying to practice the mystery of presence i began to think about church. i'm a visual person, and i love food, so i began to see broken bread scattered around my community; fragments of wafer here, fragments of wafer there; crumbs all across the collage of life.

i never used to get the benediction at the close of worship that goes something like, "our time for worship has ended; our time for being church has just begun." this past week i started to get a glimpse of "church" in my community. we think of church as that one hour a week we spend in song and silence on Sunday--we even label it as the destination ("we've got to go to church on Sunday"). we teach our children that the church is the place, not the people--folded hands, "this is the church"...pointed index fingers, "this is the steeple"...unfold hands, "open the doors and here are the people."

this week church is helping a family grieve the passing of husband/dad/papaw...helping two other families celebrate their coming together in the covenant of marriage. i'm living on a spiritual and emotional roller coaster and so very grateful that God is keeping my cart on the track...even though waking up unexpectedly at 4:00 a.m. this morning has got me wondering how sturdy the glue is today.

and yet my mind still sees broken bread scattered across my community--crumbs of grace dropped all across the collage of life--and i know that church is roller coasters, redistribution, and occasional sleep deprivation, because without these we might forget that God is holding it all together with crumbs of grace, we might actually think it was by our own power that church happens, and--God forbid--church might actually go back to just being a building we socialize in.