As I was busy painting a stage backdrop for my daughter's elementary play, surrounded by a cloud of busy noise, whisking paintbrushes and seventy kids with their parents all equally and delightfully engaged in the same task, my phone rang.

"Are you the pastor at Zion Lutheran Church?" asked a woman.

"yes."

"I need to feed my kids."

Suddenly I was no longer painting a scene of stars and planets, space and comets.

Time stood still, along with my heart. There are many "human" things I see often enough as a pastor that I have learned to weather them comfortably - but terrified mothers with hungry children always stop everything around me. And so it was.

"I need to feed my kids."

Then her story began infecting mine, like a virus you have felt before and know you cannot escape but must bear carefully. . . and some stories don't infect at all - when they do not resonate with my truth, or when they aren't for me to address - but other stories are
too true
too close
too real
and they become mine.

Perhaps you have heard one or two of these? So it was.

In one moment the stars and the comets were not relevant.
Can you be interrupted?

Busy-ness has a cost.

Since my last post (months ago) my congregation has added a four-stop, three floor elevator to serve the mobility needs of those we prefer not to notice.

You know the type: the people who can't play soccer anymore, who don't eat with chop-sticks because their arthritis is too severe; who navigate life with only peripheral vision; who's parents push them through doors in wheeled-conveyances instead of holding their hands; who stumble along behind walkers, or poke the world with their canes. Them.

God knows we love them!

We added an elevator at enormous expense, and it was perfectly extravagant. After all, when the building was designed fifty years ago and the congregation was young and frisky and we couldn't imagine needing such a thing!

But today..

We added an elevator, and along the way I have met electricians, carpenters, engineers, sheet metal workers, general contractors, roofers, drywallers, painters and cleaners. And they have lived in our building, watching Lutherans.

They were so surprised at how busy we are!

Good.

So is God.