This week.

Those of you who joined us at our Boocharist Sunday night remember that really touching moment when the very young girl in the family who joined us said the Lord’s Prayer at a volume that was definitely turned up.  We all smiled, not just because it was cute to hear her say the Lord’s Prayer with such confidence and intensity, but because it was with confidence and intensity.  She knew the words and she knew that was a moment and a prayer that she should join in with us to say…loudly.

Our faith can be like that, but our faith is an invitation, and invitations can be accepted or rejected.  If we have faith, if we persist in faith, if we take whatever great or little faith we have today, whatever it will be will be because it matters to us, and we get out of it what we put into it.  Like that little girl, some days our need for faith is strong and certain; others days may be different when our faith takes a back seat to homework, a paper that needs writing, friends who wish to hang out, or taking some time to be alone.  Faith, though, isn’t a solitary practice; we need other people who can share with us in an intentional time to remember whom and whose we are, when we’re prone to forgetting or obsessing over the homework, papers, or trapped in our own thoughts.

That young girls’ faith made us all smile, and I suspect it helped each of us say the Lords’ Prayer in a different way Sunday night.  As you begin this week that leads to All Saints Day on Friday, remember the faith you have been taught, the faith that you practice in whatever great or little way you do, and give yourself permission to come join an opportunity with others who seek to remember and practice our faith.  May this week be an invitation for you to experience a time, a life, that’s more than a set of obligations or demands.  We smile when you’re with us too because it’s always more joyful when we’re together.

–Thomas