GOD’S ALTAR

Easter is early this year, but the Altar team planned for Lent even before Thanksgiving. We prayed in the crisp autumn for what the sanctuary should look like in early spring. The prayer led to an idea that this year it should be stark, perhaps with praying hands on the altar, and perhaps with low purple flowers as we approached Easter.

We are used to thinking at least a season ahead about how to make the church beautiful, and we pray often that our work will make the congregation and visitors conscious of the presence of God in our church. I have learned from being part of Altar that how things look is important to me. I remember observing that to my husband, and him saying sagely, “I already knew that.”

If you had asked me when I joined The Church of the Good Shepherd what small group I would end up participating in, I would certainly not have said “Altar.” But when someone asked me, I found myself saying “yes.” God knew what I needed even if I didn’t.

My favorite time is when it’s my turn to go in on Saturday to “do the altar.” After I’ve finished setting the cloth, filling the candles, placing the flowers and hanging the banner, I’m often alone in the sanctuary, and I sit to dedicate the work, looking up at our beautiful cross. At that time, God’s presence is sometimes quite palpable. Other times I like the swirl of my Altar companions as we arrange and rearrange at Easter or Christmas and the design emerges from the small decisions of each person. It can be an experience of setting ego aside and letting Christ work through us.

After my car accident a few years ago (in which I could have been killed, but walked away with just bruises), I remember the first venture I made out of the house was to an Altar committee meeting. What pleasure just to be alive, and to be with women who loved me and let me just be with them without expecting much from my still-shaky self.

These altar ladies (and their husbands who support us by willingly hanging banners behind the choir, putting up trees, watering poinsettias and hanging drapes on the cross) – have been the body of Christ for me. Their hands reach, their ears listen, their arms hug. Their eyes discern beauty, and their hearts are full of Christ. They have been my small group home, and I love them dearly. It is through them that I have felt that I am a branch of the vine, a part of something wonderful and with Christ running through all of us. All of us connected to the vine.

— Nancy Searls

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist