A CONFESSION
….Thoughts about Sunday Morning…

By Marlene L. Johnson

Sunday Morning…not the Sunday morning of TV fame, but my own Sunday morning. Another Sunday when I wrestle with the question: Am I going to church today? It starts during sleep, just before time to wake up. I toss and turn trying to come to a decision. It’s Sunday after all.

When I was child, I wasn’t troubled by this question. I would wake up, get dressed in my “Sunday best” and go to Church. My parents would brook no excuses. It was just understood that this was what our family did on Sundays.

My latter day quarrel has nothing to do with my faith. My faith in God is deep, strong, enduring and sustains me. That’s the way it has been throughout my life. Church reveals both the best of us and the worst of us. Sometimes going to church can be lonely and unfriendly. There are some church members who never offer a greeting, or at best offer a dour greeting. Others dressed in their best, look down their noses if you don’t wear your “fashion runway” best. I wonder which will win out…my desire to worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, or another assault on my spirit by what sometimes happens in the house of worship. If I go to church will anyone know I’m there besides the Lord? Will I feel the emptiness and lack of genuine Christian-to-Christian contact with fellow congregants.

Maybe I’m just being nostalgic for the days when the church was filled with families I knew, and as a teenager, with cute boys I could only see on Sundays. There were smiling faces….there was recognition…there was the larger family of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, looking after one another not only on Sundays, but between Sundays.

What may be happening is my longing for fellowship… Maybe that’s because church fellowship has turned into an empty ritual for the most part until God insists on being present and makes His presence known.

I go to church to praise the Lord and to seek His guidance. I go to church to examine my walk with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I go to church seeking God’s presence. Sometimes He shows up and when He does I go home happy and spiritually fulfilled. And I go to church to mingle with fellow Christians I can embrace and I hope they will embrace me in return, and to hear wonderful, spirit filled music and listen to good preaching.

Once church service is over we are left alone to cope with our own wilderness. We go out into the scorching sands of humanity—sin, greed, degradation, violence, poverty-- and there’s nobody to bring us a drink from the spiritual well of our existence. We are left alone to find our way through the morass, hoping and praying that God will show up to guide us through.

So here I am, another Sunday morning questioning whether I should I spend another Sabbath alone in my wilderness. On those days that I opt out of church I ask if it’s because the spiritual uplift vanishes as we drop the whole mantle of Christianity in our daily walk and become our selfish human selves?

When I do go to church, I want to be joyful and not begrudge the time I spend in the House of the Lord. I want to make a joyful noise.

As the Scripture says:

Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
For the LORD is good, his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations. ( Psalm 100)

In puzzling over this question, I received an answer from one of my Christian friends who said “It’s about the bigger picture… In essence, it’s not about you; it’s about worshiping our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” I agree. But having said that I think about how Jesus turned the moneychangers out of the tabernacle because they were doing the wrong thing in a sacred place. Sometimes I feel that way…the wrong things often are done in His house and that causes me to withdraw from church services and to find the balm I need for my soul. I go and read the Bible... God is always present there.

Amen