Emma Thompson drops by our church from time to time. And yesterday, she prophesied.
No, not the actress. Emma and her twin sister Annie are the eight-year-old daughters of my friend and our communications pastor, Todd.
So get the scene. Our entire church foyer/fellowship area is covered with Christmas decorations. We’re getting ready for a big night of volunteers showing up to decorate the building for the holidays. The office staff is scattered out into the various rooms that have their names on the door. And in comes Todd, Emma and Annie bouncing behind.
Mary, our receptionist, is friendly territory for the twins. She often visits with them while they’re waiting for their dad to finish a meeting or project. She’s also learned that it’s good to offer them something to do to occupy them on days they don’t have homework or something.
Emma is loaded with questions. What’s all this? What are they going to do with it? When? The usual 8-year-old excited kind of stuff. Laughing and chattering away.
Mary says to Annie and her sister, “I have something y’all can do to help us.”
(Okay, get ready, here it comes…) [click to continue…]
(Rachel Brown and her husband, Pat, are dear friends who live in Atlanta, where Pat is on staff at Buckhead Church. She’s also the daughter of Michael and June Carter, two of our dearest friends. Michael is one of our elders at TPCC, and June is our office manager. Rachel wrote the following beautiful account of an amazing experience she had in worship with her son, Ethan. I think you’ll be as touched as I was. Enjoy! Then check out the song at the bottom.)
Right now my spirit is welling up with great joy, gratitude, and praise. My mother’s heart is proud, humble, and completely blessed by my four year old son, Ethan. Over the past few weeks, I’ve tried to be more intentional with my three precious kids, teaching them about Jesus and how they can be a lover of God and worship him. Several times this week I’ve resisted the temptation to allow my kids to watch TV in the morning. Instead we decided to turn on our worship music. We have had a great time jumping around spinning and singing songs. Honestly, it’s a great break from Bunny Town songs on Disney Channel. If you have kids you will know what I’m talking about.
We are a family deeply moved by music and have a love for all different genres. My three precious kids didn’t have a choice to love music! God has created their daddy with the love of music and great musical gifts.
We were deeply moved by “How He Loves,” a song we sang at Buckhead a few Sunday’s ago. I couldn’t wait to download this song on my IPod and plug it into my ears and just worship. Pat and I both had eyes welling up with tears and hearts full of unexplainable emotions when we heard this song. For Pat it was a mixture of emotion; he has not led worship for almost two years, now, and such a great love is deeply missed. His heart was moved by the love of God; for me, a funny moment with God. I humorously asked God why I have such a heart of worship but such a horrible voice. My humorous prayer is that all the people on earth that can’t sing will be HIS most gifted singers in heaven. If I can’t sing beautifully on earth, I’d better be able to sing in heaven! I think that you get the picture. We love worship!
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Take a look at this exquisite photo. It was taken by a guy in the UK named Wez Smith. I found it yesterday, and remembered again what an amazingly beautiful world is that we live in.
Know what it is?
I’ll tell you in a minute.
Don’t you love how even the seeming imperfections of each petal all come together to form a beautiful whole?
How even the “rough edges” all come together in a symphony of striking color?
How whatever that seed part in the middle is called (I’m no botanist) suggests the amazing reproducible wonder of future life? Future potential? Even more beauty?
Figured out what it is yet, Mr. Green Jeans?
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