And it starts with this:
As a minister I rarely found the entirety of a Sunday service depressing. But some mornings disease and despair seemed to permeate the congregation like floodwaters in sandbags, and the only people who stood during the moment when we shared our joys and concerns were those souls who were intimately acquainted with nursing homes, ICUs, and the nearby hospice. Concerns invariably outnumbered joys, but there were some Sundays that were absolute routs, and it would seem that the only people rising up in their pews to speak needed Prozac considerably more than they needed prayer.
I practically had to break my fingers to stop myself from calling my minister. Look at this! Read this!
We do joys and concerns in my church every week. Some people love the microphone and some people share very intimate, gory details. I embrace learning about people who need prayers but I am mindful of those who never raise their voice. I rarely take the microphone but I'm not above planting myself in our minister's office and bawling my eyes out.
Joys and concerns is a weekly audio newsletter. Sometimes it's messy; many times it's too much information. Often I don't make eye contact with anyone because my eyes are rolling out of my head. More often than not, it makes me put silly issues in perspective.
And here's the next part of the book:
On those sorts of Sundays, whenever someone would stand and ask for prayers for something relatively minor -- a promotion, traveling mercies, a broken leg that surely would mend -- I would find myself thinking as I stood in the pulpit, Get a spine, you bloody ingrate! Buck up! That lady behind you is about to lose her husband to pancreatic cancer and you're whining about your difficult boss? Oh, please!
As my minister pointed out on Sunday, we are blessed that we can't read each other's minds.
That doesn't mean we don't carry each other's joys and concerns all week long.
