Keeping The 7th Day

Being across the seas and away from our congregations, our church families as well as our family families, we can't meet our brethren for church each week. It gets a little lonely sometimes. We are used to singing with a whole chorale of voices and seeing and hearing the speaker in real time. It's nice to be able to call up a minister for an anointing and have him come into your home, oil in hand, to pray over your ailments. It's also nice to have a live pianist to play the hymns. We have none of these things here in the Hashemite Kingdom. But what we do have is internet access. The internet is our gateway to letters to and from our loved ones, online sermons, and phone calls to far off lands. Where would we be without the internet? In Islamic countries the weekly holiday is on Friday. This makes for a different weekend than we are used to. It's like having Sunday first and then Saturday for us. The Sabbath always feels a little different because we already had a day to rest the day before. But still we try to make it special. The five of us gather together for special meals and always make extra desserts. In the morning we read our emails from friends and family and our weekly Sabbath note and choose a sermon from the internet to listen to. Sometimes we sing the hymns from the recordings if there are any. On other weeks we sing hymns of our own choice. Sometimes Zach and I practice leading songs even though there is no pianist to lead. It makes good practice for the coming Feast of Tabernacles. Sometime in the near future we are going to practice our sermonettes we are working on for the Feast. We have our opening prayer and then begin the sermonette and sermon. Mostly we listen to messages from the home office, but there are plenty of options. One Sabbath we listened to a recording from my old stomping grounds, the Great Northwest. It is different having such a small congregation that meets together, but it helps us grow closer as both friends and family. I know I speak for the others when I say that I miss actually going to church every week and seeing all of the friendly faces that greet me. I miss the handshakes and the congregation in voice. I miss serving, passing out hymnals, the children running about, and everything else that happens at church services. God has called us to congregate weekly so we can be together and so we can learn from each other. For us in Jordan, being such a small and isolated congregation, the Feast of Tabernacles will mean a whole lot more than it would have just a month before. Lewis