Successful Sermon Survival

Yesterday was Sunday. We had church twice. Once in the morning and once in the evening, and each service we heard a sermon.
There is no end to the things we need to learn and be reminded of, so sermons are good, I'm sure. I enjoy a good sermon, and I am so glad, because there was a time when I did not.
A time when my feet could not touch the floor when I was sitting on the bench.
A time when the clock hands crawled with sloth-like movements.
A time when preachers used odd language they never used otherwise. The words I remember most vividly are these: "Is it not?" No one ever says this in real life, but the preacher would say it often.
"It is a privilege to be here this another Lord's Day morning, is it not?" "
"This is a good reminder for us today, brothers and sister, is it not?" etc.

I might have a lousy memory, but this I clearly recall: I hated sitting in church during a sermon.

Sometimes church was interesting, I enjoyed the singing and hearing my mother's rich alto voice. I did wish she would sing soprano. It seemed like soprano was the part the best women sang, but she sang alto. Despite this, I still liked to hear her.

Occasionally there was childrens' meeting. This was as close to entertainment as church services ever got...except for when we'd sing "If Ye Then With Christ Be Risen" and Bro. Derstine's tenor voice would reach for that high note on "Ri-sen" in the chorus. I loved that. But childrens' meeting was really good, too.

Surviving a sermon, though, took special skills. They admittedly had to be very subtle skills, because any obtrusive survival techniques were swiftly dealt with by Mother. She was not an unkind person, but she believed in behaving in church. And she did not believe her children needed to take anything to church save the Word of God.

Other children's mom's did not see it this way, apparently. I remember Lisa especially. She had her own purse, and it was stocked with survival gear. Lisa seemed to me like a princess with divine privileges.  I watched her with awe and envy, as she pulled things like embroidered hankies and writing tablets and pencils from her purse. Lisa, no doubt, loved sermons.

But I was not altogether without recourse. I remember, for instance, counting the tiles on the ceiling. Counting them from side to side was easy enough. Counting them from front to back was trickier, because turning around was not okay, and if you were caught, there were consequences, so you had to count the ones behind you very surreptitiously. It could be done. I successfully counted the ceiling tiles many times.

Finding the mailboxes in my copy of the Word of God was another great favorite. In some Bibles, the beginning of each paragraph is marked with a mailbox... at least that's what it looked like to me. Finding mailboxes was a lifesaver and never frowned on. I even remember finding mailboxes with my friend Roger once, when he was sitting beside me. Roger's dad was the preacher so it must have been okay. (Roger's mom sang soprano).

Also, my little Bible had pictures in it. The one I remember most vividly was the picture of Judas betraying Jesus with an army of soldiers behind him with torches lighting the night sky. There were probably six pictures all told, and I could look at them as long as I pleased...and did....but no matter how long I looked at them the sermon lasted longer still.

Perhaps the most useful thing about the pictures though, was that the back side of each page with a picture was blank. I drew pictures on the blank sides. I still can't believe Mother let me do this, but she did. The pictures are still there to prove it.

As I mentioned before, turning around was not okay, and I apparently risked it too often, because Mother came up with a plan to stop it. If she caught me turning around, she very calmly poked one finger into my ribs. If I turned around twice, two fingers. Three times, three fingers. However many finger pokes I accumulated till the end of the service was how many licks I got with her "magic wand" when we got home, unless, by some stroke of unbelievable luck she forgot about it between the sermon and the spanking. I tried to be very, very good in the interim so as not to attract any attention whatsoever to my existence. It worked, sometimes.

Childhood really is not for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of strategy and long-suffering and bravery.

Today, our church has no ceiling tiles; my Bible has no pictures; It doesn't even have mailboxes.
But that's okay, because somewhere along the line, I learned to love church, including the sermons.
And that's a beautiful thing, is it not?