Open the roof

Our church is blessed to host a Boy Scout troop.  I highly recommend it to you.  Each week more than a dozen young men and their leaders meet in our church. Our sponsorship of the group enables them to have a home, and for the leadership to nurture the group in faith and toward adulthood.

They work and they play, and sometimes something - like a window - gets broken. It's OK, though, because the boys are more important than the window. We can fix the broken window, but failing to nurture the next generation - that's much harder to fix.

I thought of our church trustees when Peter Storey told the story of the four men and the paralytic. He asked us to close our eyes and to imagine that during his sermon, plaster started falling from the ceiling as four friends broken open the church to lower the one who needed healing closer to the "action." He reminded us that even if Jesus had been preaching, the healing of the sick one was more important.

Can you imagine what would happen if four people started digging open your sanctuary ceiling during church?  How would you respond?