A Strange Sunday

Yesterday started out like most Sunday mornings around here: there was the rattling of the baby gate, followed by the hopeful calling of "Mama? Up? Mama?" Then a pause, "Daddy? Up? Daddy?" Until someone gets up to rescue the poor child from having to be in his room with all his toys and blankets and such. Since it was the weekend, it was Tim's day to do the rescuing, so I rolled over with an "Mmph mumble mumble", which in my mind was, "I'm getting up...make coffee" and Tim took the kiddo downstairs. An hour-ish later I finally unfogged my brain enough to get downstairs as well, only to find no coffee, Tim asleep on the couch, and the doodle happily watching SuperWhy and munching on toast. So I start the coffee and Tim grumps at me from the couch about how he's sick, so I told him to go back to bed, I'd take the kiddo to church and he could get better.

So that's what we did. The kiddo had no issue being left at the nursery for me, which was nice (because usually when mama drops him off it's Drama! and Tears! and Horror! So maybe we're finally outgrowing the whole separation anxiety thing.) I found a spot in the sanctuary, enjoyed the worship time, and then settled in for another fantastic sermon (because usually the sermons are fantastic) and I opened my Bible to the passage he mentioned...and found a sheet of notes on the passage from exactly one year ago.

Now, I know that pastors are going to hit the same passages up again, so that wasn't a biggie and I smiled to myself and got ready. And then I realized that I could follow along on my notes word for word with what was being preached.

Apparently, the 4th Sunday in January is Baptism sermon Sunday at our church.

Like I said, I know you're going to end up hitting the same passages but I'm not really sure how I feel about the complete recycling of a sermon unless it's been at least like five years (or some amount of time that's long enough that people aren't as likely to have the notes still sitting in their Bible.) It was...strange. A good sermon, don't get me wrong, but just strange.

So then I went to Sunday school. And no one was there. So I waited. And I waited. I stuck around in the room for 15 minutes then decided that no one was coming and I wondered if I just didn't get the email (usually our teacher's pretty good about sending out an email if he's not going to be there) - cause I checked right before I left. Finally, rather than sit around by myself, I decided to see if they needed any extra hands in the nursery since we had lunch plans for after church.

I ended up being a God-send in the 3 & 4 year old room. There were probably 10 kids and one teacher. Which is doable, but having a helper is nice. But at Bible story time, she was doing Jesus' temptation in the wilderness and she started out trying to explain the concept of temptation by something along these lines:

"Have you ever wanted to hit your sister or brother?"

All the kids shook their heads, a few said, "Hitting is bad! We don't hit at our house." or things like that.

Still, she persisted, "I know it's bad, but haven't you ever wanted to?" No one fessed up. So she switched tactics, "Well, what if mommy says that you can have only one cookie but leaves the package on the counter, have you ever wanted to take another one anyway?"

The poor kids all looked confused and explained, again, that that would be wrong.

When one little boy started in on how sometimes his daddy hit him when he was bad and got sent to his room she finally gave up and just explained that temptation is when you want to do something you know you shouldn't. But I have to say...I was uncomfortable right along with the kids.

It was just a strange, strange Sunday.