You just can't make this stuff up!

If there's anything I've learned in my years of serving the church, it's that all sorts of weird and wacky things happen there. Now I'm not talking about your average run of the mill funny stuff that makes you chuckle. No, I'm talking about the belly laugh, "No way! You gotta be kidding me!!" kind of stuff.

Like when I went to visit one of our shut ins this week at Calvary and he told me about the time the head usher's pants fell down ... as he was standing at the front of the church! And he told me about the time he knocked over a whole row of folding chairs just as the choir finished singing their anthem. Talk about a bang up finish!

Then there was the time our senior pastor first visited Calvary as a guest speaker many years ago. When he got up to the pulpit and started to speak, a stream of obscenities came out over the sound system. He stopped talking and it stopped ... but when he began to talk the obscenities started up again. Five men jumped up and ran to the sound system to change the wireless channel to another one. Turns out, the sound system had picked up a local trucker who was saying some rather colorful things over his CB radio. I told him he should have claimed he was speaking in tongues with a bad dubbing job.

Then there was the time many years ago when a friend of mine was a teenager and was practicing with the thurible at the Cathedral and the chain let go. (For those of you who don't know what a thurible is, it's the metal container on a chain in which you burn incense and sling the smoke around the church) Imagine the thurible, flying hot coals and incense shooting through the air like a comet and he's just praying it doesn't land on a car! When it landed on the sidewalk, he thought he had stomped out all the coals and cinders ... but no, the mulch caught fire and Baltimore's fire department responded to put out the fire.

Or the acolyte who, back in the days before air conditioning, just wore a surplice to stay cool in a hot humid church. But when he bent over to pick something up, the fans which were running blew up the surplice and all he had on were his boxers! A sight the visiting bishop will not soon forget.

Now I'm not saying that every Sunday is this entertaining, but I do believe God lets funny stuff happen in church and I think it serves a purpose. We need to laugh ... it's just that simple. These kinds of crazy things remind us that we are not as self-important as we think we are and there are times we just need to lighten up.

And yes, all of these things really happened in real churches ... you can't just make this stuff up!

The top five

Mitch Albom wrote a novel (which I have yet to read) called The Five People You Meet in Heaven. In it, the protagonist character Eddie dies suddenly and meets the five people who had the most impact on his life, whether he knew it or not.

I was thinking about that today along with the fact that there are people with whom we all struggle (clergy are no different than anyone else on this). What if the five you meet in heaven are the five you would have rather not been with here on earth? You know, those folks that you somehow end up in relationship with but ones you wouldn't have chosen if it were up to you: maybe it's a family member, or an in-law, or a coworker, or a member of your faith community, or someone in the neighborhood.

I have a personal prayer list of people I'm intentionally praying for each day. I realized this morning that the folks with whom I struggle most need to be at the top of my prayer list. Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. I wouldn't say I have enemies (that seems a bit strong), but there are folks I with whom I have difficulty. It would be easier to ignore them and not pray for them. But that isn't what Jesus told us to do.

So I'm changing my prayer routine. When I open my list up, I'll start with the folks I'm struggling with ... they are my new "top five." That way, if they are the ones I'm going to end up meeting, I won't have to apologize for ignoring them!

Miss Myrtle

One of the most remarkable people I've ever met died yesterday. Myrtle Rice succumbed to cancer at the age of 102. Yes, you read that right ... 102! And up until about one week ago, she was living on her own in a senior citizen's apartment complex.

She was a really neat lady who lived most of her life on a dairy farm in Urbana MD ... which is now a planned housing development. She attributed her long life to hard work. She took care of her brothers and her parents - both of whom died in her arms. She has two surviving daughters, but outlived her only son and her husband. She was a devoted member of Calvary United Methodist Church and had a strong faith.

She didn't like doctors much, especially when they wanted to put her in the hospital. She loved the Orioles and going out to Red Lobster (she even had her 102 birthday dinner there!). Myrtle had a sense of humor and could see the absurdity in life.

Even in the end when her cancer was quite painful, she told me she was grateful to God for everything God had given her. She was just curious as to why God let her live so long. She asked God to just let her go to sleep and not wake up because she'd done everything she wanted to do.

God answered her prayer. I'm sure she heard Jesus say, "Well done good and faithful servant."

I went out to scrape the ice off my sidewalk this afternoon. It was hard work to crack the ice and shovel it into my yard. I broke of large thin slabs and flung them onto my ice covered lawn. They shattered and the pieces scattered and slid all over the yard. There was something really fun and childlike about doing this. As I did it, I could sense Miss Myrtle watching this and laughing. As my back got sore, I could hear her say, "Come on, you know hard work won't kill you."

It's been a privilege ... thanks Miss Myrtle!