Rhonnie Scheuerman’s Inspiration Station For All

In Need This morning during the Christmas Season

Author Andres Attaway: Last Sunday was one of those Sundays what going to church seems more of a burden than a privilege.  We sang only a couple of verses of the hymns I liked, while the ones I didn’t like seemed endless.  I hadn’t remembered to pick up a service book, so I had to strain to hear the lessons, unable to follow along with the text.  I struggled  to get the gist of the sermon, and the bits I could pick up on only increased my confusion.

The problem, of course, wasn’t with the singers or the reader or preacher, the problem was with me.  Over the past few months I’ve been stressed at work and troubles at home.  I’d become withdrawn  hiding from my problems.  And in the process I have been hiding by God.

In the afternoon I walked Maggie and Stephen to play rehearsal and then headed north to the very tip on Manhattan.  I sat on a bench in the park, drinking  a cup of coffee  and looking out over the salt marsh, with a wooded hill on my left, and beyond it, the Palisades.  For some reason , of poetry started floating through my mind.  And I thought back, for the first time in quite a while, to a long-ago evening in a college dorm, where my friend Kevin and I read the whole of Revelation  out loud, and through the mysterious images and in the rhythm  of the King James text, my heart was touched by a Presence I’d never felt before. I took a sip of coffee  and watched  the birds wading in the marsh.   And for the first time in quite a while, I started to pray:

Lord blow with Your Spirit on the embers.

You lighted so many years ago and set my heart on fire.

Andrew Attaway