weekender

To tell you about this last weekend I have to start with Friday. That morning started with a check-up at the doc’s office but first it involved getting out of bed and achieving awake-dom. But I did get up and started the day in the normal ways and headed out the door to the doc. During this 10-15 minute trip I was enjoying scanning and finding the signs of spring – blossoms and tiny new green leaves.

Within sight of the office building all traffic was stopped for the crossing of a long train. I chose not to get frustrated and did call the doc office to let them know I may be late. Fortunately I had allowed enough time for this delay and when I arrived, I signed in at exactly my appointment time. It was a good check-up on some physical things that are bothersome to me.

I had determined to go through North Augusta and pickup a few items at Wal-Mart. Within two blocks of leaving the parking garage and on another street, behold, yet another train stopped the flow of traffic. This was a semi-permanent delay since a police car was also blocking the street and the traffic was left to find its own path around this inconvenience.

I did get to see parts of the city that I had not seen in a while but having lived most of my life in this area, I detoured and easily found my way back to SC. After several errands, I was back home and getting cleaned up to go to a weekend youth retreat at our church. This is called an “Encounter with the Cross” and started at 5:30pm on Friday and went until 6pm Sunday evening, with the youth and leaders staying in the church gym. Then on Sunday, this group was in charge of the pm service.

This event involved many training sessions punctuated with worship music and periods of prayer. All meals were provided and it was sort of like a lock-in on spiritual steroids. All was great but one of the highlights to me was Sat. night when we all had an “encounter with the cross”. We saw the portion of the “Passion of the Christ” that showed His beating and crucifixion and then we each had communion and went to the cross to pray. Three crosses were set up for this – very moving.

I was the old codger of the group and after the last sessions on Fri. and Sat., I went home and came back next morning – just couldn’t hang with the young energetic ones. The last session of very active prayer and worship on Sun. evening was hard to describe to anyone, especially if they were not Pentecostal and not present. Suffice it to say that the Spirit of the Lord did some amazing things in the lives of those present – ALL of those present, even the old guy.

This carried right over from the gym to the evening worship service at main church – the young ones were “rocking the house”. This is a poor description of our youth weekend because it was amazing beyond these few words, so if you are curious, you can email me at mreddie@bellsouth.net and inquire. Let it be known that God was good – the whole weekend. ec