Worship

(From another parish magazine. Author ‘Unknown.’)

A regular church goer wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper complaining that it made no sense going to church every Sunday. “I’ve been going now for thirty years,” he wrote “and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 sermons. For the life of me I cannot remember a single one of them. So what’s the point? I’m wasting my time and the time of the clergy preparing and preaching those sermons.”

This started a real controversy in the ‘Letters to the Editor’ column, much to the delight of the editor. It went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher:

“I’ve been married now for 30 years. In that time my wife has cooked some 32.000 meals. For the life of me I cannot recall the entire menu for a single one of those meals. But I do know this: they all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work and live my life to the full. If my wife had not given me those meals I would be physically dead today. Likewise, if I had not gone to church for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today!”

Alan Hayday