At Least These Thoughts Occur Before the Service

As I was passing by my church on this fine Sunday morning (I use the term "my" rather loosely here as I haven't been attending regularly and, as you can see by the first part of this sentence, I was just passing by rather than walking in) I noticed there was quite a crowd rushing in to get the good seats.  I would like to pause here for a minute to note that in church, unlike sporting events, good seats is not an objective, but is rather a subjective concept and a study in individual valuation.  If you review the crowd in a church, you will usually see that the younger crowd sticks to the back with the older crowd being in the front.  The younger crowd values a quick exit, while the older crowd values being able to see and hear all the happenings.  In my particular denomination, Catholicism, you sit up front to get snack time first, but you are the last to leave.  It is all about which you value more.  Either way, I have digressed too far, as this particular note is not about the good seats, just that people arrive early to get them, wherever they are.  And I guess middle seats suck.

What struck me on this particular jaunt by my church (shit, there I go again, and there I go swearing.  Maybe I should stop in next time for confession.) was thinking about what those people would do that arrived early for the good seats.  You have a lot of time to kill, and iPhones aren't yet an accepted form of media in a church setting, as I have found out on too many a football Saturday where weddings happen to interfere.  There really isn't much to do.

One common thing that I have seen many churches do is have their choirs help the congregation practice some portion of the songs that will be used during the service.  Finally, we have arrived at the point for this post:  Who are we practicing for?  Let's start with the premise that the church service is for an apparently omniscient being, so He already has heard all of the songs during practice, and He even knows how the song will end up during the actual service.  So practicing for Him doesn't make sense.  In fact, with all of the repetitive singing of all of the songs every Sunday around the world, you would think less practice would be a better service, as it would be a reprieve from the nagging child sound He must usually hear every day. 

If practice isn't for the omniscient one, then who else is there?  It can't be for those who showed up early, as they were there during practice.  For this exercise of practicing singing before a church service to make sense, then, there really can only be one answer.  It must be an effort to show up the late arrivers in the middle seats.  The early arrivers want to point out how much better they can sing the songs, and there is no escape from the trap that is the middle seat.

Signage From Above

My glamorous work took me on a journey across the Midwest today.  About two hours and 18 ounces of soda into the drive I saw a billboard that caught my eye, and this time it wasn't for the Lion's Den.  It was a simple billboard, all it had was a giant Bible and the words "God says read the Bible."  This billboard entertained me for a solid half hour as I thought:

1.  What a great twist on Simon says.   God says read the Bible.  God says be nice.  God says go to church.  Sodomy is okay.  Haha, caught you, I didn't say God says... now GO TO HELL!

2.  Prophecy has really gotten lazy and uncreative, like fortune cookies that don't tell fortunes anymore.  "Hey Joe, this is God.  Uh, It's Friday and I am on my way out to a 3:45 tee time.  I hate to lay this on you, but I was supposed to reach out to my people via a prophecy today.  Can you do me a huge favor?  Let's just keep it simple, say, let's put a billboard in some random location on an interstate in the middle of nowhere.  Don't strain yourself on the message, we don't want to cause that heart attack of yours to come a few years eaarly do we?  Oops, shouldn't have hit the 19th yet.  Anyway, just tell em I said to read the Bible.  That should work for now."

3.  Are illiterate people going to Hell since whoever wrote this sign thinks it is against God's wishes to not read?

Ultimately my thought process was broken by one overriding thought...I had to pee.