First things first…

This is not an account of a traffic accident.

This is a quick summary account of my vacation in Ireland earlier this month with my beautiful wife.  We’ll call this the “rental” as it wasn’t permanent and, well, we rented a car while we were there.

So Ireland is an amazing country.  You’ve already learned a bit about the Irish sport of “hurling” if you caught this post last week.  To clarify, we spent our entire two weeks in the Republic of Ireland which makes up the majority of the island.  The people there are warm and amazingly hospitable.  I’m a huge fan of history, especially European and Christian history and Ireland serves up a unique blend of both.  Being a country that was never conquered by Rome makes it pretty different from the other Western European countries I have visited.  And, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire Ireland was one of the few places where Christianity still continued to spread.  We visited some phenomenal monastic settlements and one thousand year old churches.  Castles dotted the country side and of course, that meant lots of sudden stops on the shoulder to check out random ruins.  We drank lots of coffee, ate lots of great pub food, and talked about the future and our dreams.  It was awesome.

Let me introduce you to the “semi”.  You’ve all come across them I’m sure.  If they’re not slamming in to you they’re tailgating you, making you feel like you’re on the edge of utter destruction.  Actually I don’t even know how I’m going to land these metaphors.  But the “semi” I’m referring to is reality.  And coming back from vacation and getting back to work is a good way to get hit with a truck load of reality.  What I encountered when I got back to work was what sounded like blown speakers in our auditorium (until we realized it was the drive-rack settings), a youth kickoff, and planning for a massive church-wide serving day just a couple weeks off.

It was a pretty crazy week.

So when you’re hit with the semi truck what do you do?

Prayer, God’s Word, rest.  We’ll be tempted to toss these things out the window with a semi staring us down but they are now even more important than when you were in rental zone.  As you plan that worship set for Sunday, don’t forget to worship.  As you gather again with your volunteers, don’t forget to pray.  As you encounter weird bugs in your sound system , don’t forget that it’s just stuff and the Church is the people not the program or the building.

Welcome back