I didn’t know how lost until last Sunday.

Since our move to Colorado, Suzy and I have not attended church. We miss our FUMCR connection and the weekly buzz we got by attending and participating in all of the doings of the church. So last week we decided we would try out a church, and picked Vail Church, which is about 20 miles away in Eagle-Vail.

Saturday night I received a call from friends asking me to play golf with them early Sunday morning. We knew it was going to be a beautiful morning and by playing early I would be done with plenty of time to work on all of the unopened moving boxes in the garage. Pretty tempting. Now my friends were not doing the devil’s work, they were just being friends. But something clicked in my mind and I said no, I was going to church.

We woke up Sunday and headed to church about a 20 minute drive away, same as the drive we had for FUMCR.

Pulled up and the parking lot was jammed. Walked in and saw people of all ages in all kinds of attire, from dressy to casual. I could definitely wear shorts to church in the summer.

Sat down and began to read the bulletin. I couldn’t because I was starting to see white spots on the page… a migraine was coming on. I knew it was the devil trying to attack me. I remembered Suzy was drinking a Diet Coke on the way and asked her if she had finished it, she said she hadn’t. I asked if she had any chocolate, another way I overcome migraines (isn’t God good), when she reminded me there was migraine medicine in the car. I ran out and took 2 migraine pills and a couple of slugs of caffeine from the Diet Coke which also works on my migraines. I got back inside just in time to hear the start of the first song. It was an old revival song that had recently been released by a contemporary Christain group.

My tears started immediately.

I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit moving within this congregation.

The second song was “Holy is the Lord God Almighty”. I had been singing that tune off and on for the prior 2 weeks. I continued to cry.

The third song was “Indescribable”. The words were projected above the singers making it easy to sing along. The words were just beautiful…

“From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea
Creation’s revealing Your majesty
From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring
Every creature unique in the song that it sings
All exclaiming

Indescribable, uncontainable,

You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God

All powerful, untameable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God”

As many times as I had heard this song, I had never focused on the words before. The tears continued to come.

The next song was “Amazing Grace”.

 “I was lost, but now I’m found”

How I kept from falling I do not know.

The sermon was given by Reverend Craig Smith from the Book of Daniel. He talked throughout the sermon about personal accountability, about not getting into yourself, about admitting before God your personal sins and releasing them to God. I was taking notes, this was really wonderful stuff. And as I listened, I heard Suzy crying quietly beside me.

I took my pen and wrote her a note that said: “I think we have found our church home?”

She shook her head yes.

We introduced ourselves at the end of the service and volunteered. We didn’t tell him what we wanted to do nor did we expect anything. We just wanted to say we were ready to serve, that God moved our hearts and we were ready again as we were at FUMCR.

BTW: Craig Smith’s sermons can be found at www.thevailchurch.com. I am going to listen to some of them over the coming days. He also tells great jokes, just like Clayton Oliphint at FUMCR. In fact we are going to send the joke he told on Sunday to Clayton. I had not heard it before. I’m still giggling about it.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 10:37 am and is filed under FUMCR, RMC, Vail Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.