Memorable Moments at Church

At different times in my life, I have been organist or pianist at church. In all those years, there are bound to be some Sundays that are more memorable than others, for reasons not ecclesiastical. One summer Sunday, I  decided to wear some red sandals with crepe rubber soles. I hadn’t worn them in years (I keep shoes and clothes until they are outdated, then full circle, in fashion once again). These shoes were maybe ten or fifteen years old but still good so I wore them to church.

I was sitting on the piano bench, well into a hymn, and happened to glance down at the pedals. There under my feet was a scattering of whitish flecks. What in the world? And then, as my right foot connected with the pedal again, I noticed more mysterious grains. After the song service, my shoes felt odd as I walked back to my pew. I was horrified to see a trail of bits of crepe rubber on the carpet from piano to pew. No way could I plead innocence. The evidence began and ended with my shoes. What had been comfortable crepe rubber soles fifteen years ago were soles no longer.

I didn’t stop to talk to anybody on the way to my car after church ended but at least the sidewalk was clear of those crumbs of crepe. The rubber was all back in the church. What the custodian thought when she vacuumed the carpet, I don’t know but as soon as I got home, the shoes went to their final resting place–in the trash can.

Another time, different Sunday, I was seated at the electric powered organ in our church. It was a spring morning and one of Oklahoma’s memorable thunderstorms crashed and sizzled outside. However, inside the church, we ignored all that and continued singing. We were on an old hymn, “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning” when a particularly bright bolt of lightning flashed. Lower lights, upper lights, and organ blinked off. Undaunted, the congregation, accompanied by the piano, continued singing about those lower lights, proving that worship could continue, even without them. However, taken in the context of that wonderful hymn, “lower lights” means Christians and as such, they kept singing, undimmed by an earthly power outage.

And then there was the music loving spider many years after the lightning episode.  He dropped down from somewhere above me on his invisible thread right in the middle of the offertory and stopped at approximately twelve inches in front of my nose.  My hands were busy on organ keys so I couldn’t swat him away. He simply hung there, looking at me. Who was I to squash one of God’s creatures who evidently was mesmerized by music? But I breathed a sigh of relief when the song service ended.

Although none of these things seemed particularly amusing to me at the time, looking back I can laugh at them. Maybe God sent them my way to remind me that He has a sense of humor and we, His people, should too.