A (Mostly) Quiet Day

 

"Return of the Prodigal" by Francis de Erdely

If I’m going to blog, I really do need to take photos. My photo-taking is not great, although I did snap the above picture at the Blowing Rock Museum today. The painting jumped out at me because I instantly recognized it as illustrating the younger son's homecoming in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

I would not normally have gone out of my way to visit a museum here. Actually, I wasn’t there to see the museum. I walked all the way back to Blowing Rock Methodist Church so I could discover where all those congregants parked on Sunday. The museum is tucked between the Presbyterian and the Methodist churches, and behind the museum is – voila! -- public parking. Not a lot, but some. If I return to church with my son and granddaughter this coming Sunday, we will drive and park behind the museum.

I noticed that the Presbyterian and the Episcopalian churches both have parking lots behind the churches. The Methodist church does not. I wonder if the Methodists steal some of the Presbyterians' parking spaces. 

So -- I was walking past the museum and saw it was open and had no admission fee, so I stopped in. It had a nice photographic history of Blowing Rock, and there were four or five exhibits. Not bad for a small town.

Otherwise, it was a quiet day except for several afternoon fly-overs by military jets – there were two today and three yesterday. They fly very low and are extremely, horribly loud – you can hear them coming VERY fast. The whole building shakes.  I have never experienced this, and yesterday I thought the world was ending, or a bomb was falling, or aliens were landing. I actually leaned down with my arms over my head; the noise genuinely frightened me.  Other people here ran outside their units looking at the sky. I caught a glimpse of one of the jets through the window – military for sure. Why would they be flying here?

My heart pounded for long minutes after they were gone. What must it be like to live in Ukraine, I wondered, where the bombs really do fall. 

Before the fly-over, in the quiet, I wrote a sermon for July 30 on the lectionary scripture from Romans 8. The Spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. For sure, the suffering in Ukraine draws sighs too deep for words. Tonight, I’m praying for the people there.