Reflections on Saturdays gathering

I must admit that Saturday morning came suddenly for me, as I was driving to the hall and I had a panicky feeling about speaking at the service. I took a few breaths, realized that I probably had too much to say and it would be about hitting a few main points. I also knew that I had another chance to talk on Sunday. As I spoke about before, I knew that I needed to just focus on one task at a time. My first self defined role was to meet people as they arrived.

The first "oh shit" moment was that I had promised Emilee that Baxter would never be left alone. It was a total oversight that during the service, everyone would be at the service. I quickly texted Em, and I asked Allison to tag her off, so she could come to the service. I also thought about who I could ask, to tag Allison off, as I knew that I wanted her to be at my side. When I saw my friend Erik, I knew that I could ask him. I also asked my friend Dave, so that Erik wouldn't have to do it alone. (I actually predicted that he would probably had preferred being alone, but I wanted to employ the buddy system)
Crisis averted, check.

Once the service had started, I recognized that I had too much energy to sit down. (I also had to tweak my speech). I pushed myself past the people crammed into entry way. I then moved to the front of the hall, along the side wall. I noticed that there was almost a full row and a half in the front of free seats. I scanned the room and looked for people that I could seat in these spots. I was reminded of the story that Jesus spoke about in Luke chapter 14. Many people were careful not to sit too close, especially in the front two rows, they needed to be given permission to sit closer. I was able to move around the room and ask people to sit in the front. I felt so blessed to be able to honour these friends. (I also know that I missed out on a few people, and for that I am sorry, you know who you are … ) I also heard that my friend Anne Marie had arrived late, and had been pushing people out of the hallway and into the room (not unlike they do in Japan on the subway) and making sure that everyone could hear the service.

I would like to put a bit of an aside at this point. Some people had made the inference that Saturday's service was Tam's and Sundays was Brent's. For me nothing was farther from the truth. Saturday contained the consensus decisions from both of us. I knew that because I had such a large network, this venue would be too small. I was pleased that this hall was full to overflowing and my goal in planning Sunday's event was that everyone would be invited to this service as well, knowing that for some they would be too exhausted and Saturday would serve their needs. I also knew that during the planning phase, I didn't want to sacrifice my "have to's" and as soon as we had agreed to two services, we could replace the word "or" with "and". So yes maybe Sunday was a bit of an overflow of ideas, but I will discuss this at my next post.