I am back, and it has been an emotional, crazy and rejuvenating last ten days. We flew out on the 16th for North Carolina for Kate's grandmother's funeral. Everything went well under the circumstances and it was good to see Kate's extended family whom we had not seen for a couple of years and I met some cousins I had not met before. We came back Sunday Morning and preached at Reconciler and then flew out 24 hours later for the Los Angeles/San Diego area to visit my parents and sister for Thanksgiving, and see some friends of ours who live in LA. My parents have a timeshare condo in a resort near San Diego where they spend Thanksgiving week and have done so for the last 20 years. This year they had a reserved a second condo so Kate and I had one to ourselves.
It is the first time I have gone away and done basically nothing. Usually I have books I am studying and a sketchbook in which I am drawing. Of course much of our time was spent in the car, driving in LA has become quite something, it seems like traffic is much much worse than when Kate and I left LA in 1999. I know this as we drove around to see our three friends whom we were unable to see all at once. Monday evening immediately upon arriving and before driving south to the resort, we saw our friend Alex. Tuesday afternoon we drove back up to Hollywood and met our friend Deon at an out door cafe, (not something you will find in Chicago), and Friday evening we drove south towards San Diego to meet our Friend Michael. We had not seen them for three years at least.
The rest of the time was spent just sitting around with my parents and sister, or napping or watching TV. Cable is a good thing to have not in our house, but it is fun when you are away on vacation. Kate got to see some of the fashion shows on TLC, and we saw a few old movies on TLC, one I might post on later was a Lucille Ball movie Her Husband's Affairs. I found it to be an interesting movie on many levels, though in some ways it is a straightforward comedy.
I thought I had other reflections but in the end its just a long winded way of saying I am back. But I think I am feeling a little jet lagged.
Reading about Evangelical worship (the more experiential, praise-gathering) and Eucharistic worship (let us call it catholic), makes me wonder if either of them is evangelical (i.e., Gospel-based).
ReplyDeleteCertainly the commission to "do this in memory of me" seems to make a Eucharist evangelical. We see them in Acts (20:7), and in the accounts left us by Justin Martyr.
It seems to me that the argument could be made that Evangelical worship departs from evangelical, scriptural, and apostolic worship, insofar as we can gather from texts of these eras.
Yet Paul says that he is a Jew to win Jews, a Gentile to win Gentiles; should we adapt to circumstances, even in worship, if evangelism will be served?