Wednesday, October 10, 2007

"All the comforts of home"

My time in Santo Domingo went well--it was hot, but I had a fan over my bed, so I slept well. The power went off several times, but never for more than 30 minutes at a time. At one point I thought about our title and it was pretty close to true--I had most of the comforts of home, but especially when it comes to worshipping that ain't necessarily so.

Many of the churches that meet on Sunday morning (almost all only meet once on Sunday--morning or afternoon) begin worship at 8 AM. Why? Because of the neighborhood noise--everyone has the windows open and about 10 or 11 AM everybody gets going, which means they turn up their music as loud as it will go. Since they are done by 10 now, it doesn't matter. Another church stopped meeting on Friday night for the same reason. How we take for granted not only the A/C, but the blessing of being able to worship without outside distractions.

Although most brethren who work, work until 5 PM or so, many of the churches meet at 5 PM during the week--the power has a tendency to go off for a couple of hours from around dark (6:30-8 or so). By meeting at 5, they're done by 6:30 at the latest, so avoid that problem altogether. Again, how blessed we are to have uninterrupted power.

Then again many of those who meet at that hour don't meet in the church building--it's simply too hot there. Many meet under a shade tree in ome of the brethren's yard, which means they must transport chairs, etc. back and forth.

Do we take advantage of the blessings we have to worship God, or do we look for excuses not to? No matter how "bad" we have it here, it's better than most brethren have it.

Tol

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