Worship Service in the Face of Storms

On Saturday, it looked like the worst of Hurricane Dorian would stay away from us.  Yesterday morning, the forecast was similar, but the hurricane was forecast to be a bit closer to the coast.  In short, we will probably not experience a direct hit in Broward county, but with a huge storm that close, it's hard to predict the impacts.

We went to church anyway.  I was expecting attendance to be light, but it looked fairly normal.  Our pastor had already been at work taking some of the smaller garden objects inside, but the church is far enough inland that we didn't need to do much storm prep for the building.

Our pastor had made a Sunday morning decision to switch the approach of the sermon.  He was going to start a 4 Sunday series on The Lord's Prayer.  Instead, he chose 6 Psalms that talk about storms and God being a constant source of refuge.  Six of us read the Psalm and talked about a time when God was a refuge.

We had a variety of stories, as you might expect.  The stories spoke for themselves, and I was glad that our pastor just let them stand without much commentary.

I was one of the reader reflectors.  I went after several people had shared stories of miracles.  I talked about some of the smaller times I had requested the presence of God, like during a job search or the home renovations after Hurricane Irma.  I used the opportunity to remind us all that God is interested in every facet of our lives.  We don't need to face a huge, life altering event to ask God for help and strength.

The rest of the service remained the same, which made a certain sense.  The bulletins had been printed with the hymns.  We don't have hymnals at the pews.  I did spend part of the service wishing that we were singing some of the songs with weather themes.

It was a good reminder of how something as structured as our liturgical worship service can be refigured and rather quickly.  It was a good reminder of how the Psalms have something to say about almost every situation we might face in the 21st century.