Whispers of the Spirit

by Ann Apple

Awhile back, like one who travels up porch steps and rings the bell waiting to be greeted, I found myself settling into worship. I wondered, "How will I see God in worship today?" These days I am weary from the division and spirit of unkindness unleashed in Christ's church. It is hard to be a preacher in the pew; it takes a certain sense of detachment to avoid becoming overly critical, outright uncaring or remotely distant from one's critical reflection skills. Now that I have said that out loud about preachers, maybe it is just as hard, if not harder, to be a layperson in the pew. Maybe it is just hard for any of us to come before God.

Anyway, I slid down the cushioned pew and nestled in with my family, tucked in for a time, in a sacred space in the presence of God and God's holy angels. I found myself sandwiched between the wisdom of ages. In the pew in front of me was a woman named Julia; a preacher's wife, a community activist, a mother, a grandmother, an agent of God's good instruction. In the pew behind me was a woman visiting her son, a woman named Sara; a banker's widow, blinded by macular degeneration; one of the first women to have her picture in the hallowed hallway of elders in the Alabama church that supported me through seminary, a mother, a grandmother, an agent of God's good instruction.

It was Julia's first Sunday back in worship after an extended illness. She sat shoulder to shoulder with extended family. Almost a month to the day after burying her lifetime partner of sixty-two years, Sara was in worship sitting with her youngest son and daughter-in-law. Surely, God brought us there together.

I began to see, like Hagar saw in the wilderness at the well of Beer-lahai-roi. Pushed out into the wilderness, pushed like the pain of natural childbirth by Sarai's harshness, Hagar encounters the LORD and is the first to ever utter a name for the Divine. She names God, Lahai-roi, "One who sees."

Worship continued. Julia rose to sing, but in the host of hymn stanzas, when weary, she sat down. Those gathered around her engulfed her with a chorus. Sara stood to affirm her faith. When we confessed together, I was awed by the depth of her confident confession, "I believe in the communion of the saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen."

The Spirit whispered, "Do you see me now?" Like Hagar in the wilderness, I was seeing God, in the sanctuary a few paces from the baptismal font with its renewing water. Sandwiched in wisdom, God put our family behind one frail in health, but strong in recovery, singing praise. God put our family in front of another frail in grief, but strong in life, still gathering, giving praise, and trusting in God's good faithfulness. Like Hagar, pushed into the wilderness a first time where she first learned of God's grace, these women were a portrait of God's grace in the midst of worship.

Earlier in the year, Julia had pulled me aside and said, "Anne, I need to say something to you. Do you have a minute?" "Sure, what's up?" She replied, "I just wanted to tell you that you are going to change the world." Lost to her comment, I replied flippantly, "Well, thanks, I think?" "No, Anne, I mean it." Again I responded with a hint of dismissal, "Well, thank you, Julia." Persistent as the day is long she continued, taking my hand into hers, "I know what's in you and it's hard. But, you are doing the right thing. The time you give to your children, the way you shape them, you are changing the world, one day at a time. Your time will come. I wish someone would have told me that when I was younger." The Spirit whispered and said, "Listen. Wait."

More than a decade earlier Sara had pulled me aside and with a very strong opinion had asserted, "You're really not going to do that are you?" All I wanted was for preschoolers to be part of the lengthy gathering worship at Vacation Bible School. I wanted all of God's children to worship around our makeshift well, a fragile plaster of Paris construction. Sara and I danced around the possible inclusion of an energetic infusion of toddlers. I had one, and as she'd say, "If you count my husband Dickson," she'd raised four. Sara said to me, "I wouldn't do it." The Spirit was shouting, not whispering, but I wasn't ready to listen. It was chaos — Sara was right.

For me, these women are suppressed poets. Sara traveled to Guatemala in mission in her early eighties, nearly without sight, traveling mountainous footpaths and performing physical labor in treacherous terrain, as she could, bringing living water to a community. When asked by the local paper, "Why are you going?" she responded, "Why not?" On the occasion of being elected as an elder emeritus, Sara responded, "Well, I guess they did it so I couldn't vote anymore."

As my husband put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in during the prayers of the people, crayons on the cushion between us, the blue plastic folder on the floor with the bible story papers strewn all over, I came before God in prayer with certain knowledge of how I'd seen God in worship and confident that God had seen me. I, like Hagar in the wilderness a second time, had moved to dare to abandon visions of life in the wilderness of church.

It was just another Sunday morning in ordinary time, yet these wise women ushered in the story of God's grace, through Hagar's voice, and spoke to my weariness borne in a denomination at odds in fear. These women are poets of God's good instruction, entertaining angels unaware. There are days of parenting and pastoring during which the water in the skin seems to be nearly gone. Yet, the angel of God calls from heaven, as she did to Hagar, and says, "What troubles you?" And before I can answer on my own, the angel sets me down in the middle of wisdom to listen, to see and to patiently drink from the well of life.