Walda, My Apologies!

Yesterday morning I left our house about 5:30 a.m. It was dark. It was cold! The roads were snow-packed and icy. In fact, the Interstate heading into town was closed because it was too treacherous.  My sweet husband let me take his vehicle truck (he likes us to call it a truck although it is a petite small SUV) because it has 4-wheel drive and my car does not. I was very grateful. There were some really high piles of snow and I was afraid I would get high-centered. Isn't he a great guy?

Anyhoo... when I came home last evening the sky was bright and everything was wet. I enjoyed watching cars spraying high walls of water on each other. It looked so cool! There was water everywhere! It was a different world than I'd seen at 5:30 a.m.  Since we are in a drought, I felt gratitude for all the moisture!  That is when I realized I owed Walda an apology. I treated her as an unwelcome guest when she was just bringing us water, fresh water! Sorry, Walda! My apologies for not giving you more respect when you were here.

Show Some Respect

If you just had a short time to live, what would be the most important thing you'd want to say to those you loved?  No, this isn't a post about my hospice work.  I was thinking about Jesus entering Jerusalem, knowing he just had a few days left to teach.  Since it is Holy Week, I thought I'd explore some of those last teachings.

One of the things he did was to try to clean up the temple.  He went there and found people using it as a place of shady business.  He was upset and said to them, "It is written,, My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a den of robbers."  He was so angry he overturned their tables and chairs!

All my life I've been told that the people are what is important at church, not the building.  I believe that.  I've even had some strong opinions about all the money that goes into a fancy church building that could've been used toward mission work such as feeding the hungry.  However, from this passage I also have come to believe that it is important to have such a space as a church or temple, set aside as a sacred place of prayer and worship.  Out of respect to God, that place is to be set apart and used to his glory.  By honoring the place, we are honoring our God.

Since Jesus used some of his precious last days of teaching to make this point, I think we are probably supposed to take notice.  What do you think about this?