I love our new Parish. I love the scent of the incense (anyone laughing out there?).

I love the people (even though I don’t know them well).

I love the Matins’ reading of the Psalms.

I love when Lisa sings, especially the song which includes the line “why do you look for the living among the dead?”.

I love the fact that the nave is sacred and we are expected to treat it that way.

I love that we have to “join” the Body by being chrismated.

Mark and I went to a Vineyard Pastor’s conference years ago at “big” Vineyard. Don Williams spoke about disention in the churches and folks leaving because of being angry with one another. I remember Don saying something like “you are a family, deal with it”. I get the feeling that this Body really believes that.

I think that the worst part of leaving the Vineyard was that very few people called us at all. They were our family for more than 7 years. Mark spent more waking hours at the church than at home. We prayed with them and celebrated with them and cried with them. We poured our hearts into that family. Don’t you call family when they move away? Don’t you keep in touch? We have been gone for over 5 years and I’ve only stopped sending birthday and anniversary cards to many of those “friends” this year. You see, there’s less than a dozen people that ever responded.

So, I never wanted to join another church. I was happy with our little group. We called and wrote and checked up on each other. When I found out that Jason and Deb were attending Monrovia Vineyard (to keep the kids involved with a youth group), I was a little ticked. I was secretly happy when I found out that Jason was having a tough time sitting through the whole church thing. It was threatening to me that Jason wasn’t satisfied with our little body.

But I knew something was missing. I knew that I wasn’t becoming more like Jesus. I stopped reading my Bible and even doing the morning prayers. I wasn’t spending any time with Jesus. Now, I miss worshipping the LORD if I don’t do it every day. Thanks be to God for leading us to St. Peter’s.

Christ is risen!