Hello!
Last week I was on overhead display duty at the Wednesday service. This was not the first time I was on, and I am told this is the easiest service to do overhead for. So, it should not have been a struggle…
Quick disclaimer: Overhead is easy and a lot of fun, so for anyone planning on signing up for overhead as a part of Dedicated Giving, please don’t be put off by the following mishaps!
The Wednesday service follows a normal Sunday service flow, with one or two bits left out. It started with the Gloria, said after the welcome. Or rather I thought it did. I had the slides on the screen, prepped and ready to go next! So, I was very confused when suddenly the lay minister started leading us in an entirely different prayer. I started frantically clicking through all the other slides putting goodness knows what up on the screen until at the very last line I realized, it’s the Collect of Purity.
“Almighty God
to whom all hearts are open
all desires known
and from whom no secrets are hid:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit
that we may perfectly love you
and worthily magnify your holy Name
through Christ our Lord.”
We say this verse in every service. We might not know the name of this portion of the service, but if you went up to an Anglican and said: “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open”, they would automatically respond with the rest of it. Anglicans know their liturgy! Which is fortunate, because the words to the Collect of Purity never made an appearance on the screen that day. The words were literally being said all around me, but I was too busy panicking to take any notice.
Following this mishap, I was determined not to make any further mistakes. Foolish. When we got to the Collect for the day, the one part of the Eucharist that does change and the congregation does not know, I did find the right set of slides to put on the screen. Possibly emboldened by my great success, I again didn’t listen to the congregation. While saying the lines, I put the first slide up with the first half of the collect. I could see the second slide on the screen and started reading the second half of the collect, vaguely aware that the congregation was suddenly a lot quieter. Claire had to gently point out that I had carried on reading the next slides, without putting it up for everyone else to see… If I could have crawled under the benches and disappeared, I would have.
I think our relationship with God can be a bit like my misadventures at the overhead. When the Collect of Purity was being read, I knew the lines, I could hear the congregation saying them! But I didn’t realize what I was hearing, because I only had eyes for the problem I had caused and was panicking about fixing it. This is meant to be a prayer that focusses us on Christ, but I could only focus on the issue.
Sometimes our communication with God can go along the lines of “Thank you, I’m sorry, help me with x, y, z please, love you, bye.” We talk to God about everything, but we don’t take the time to hear His response. We become too fixated on the problems or daily tasks, so when God’s response to our panicked prayers is perfectly visible, we don’t have eyes to see or ears to hear.
In Psalm 5:3, David talks about laying his requests before God each morning and waiting expectantly. Hearing God and learning to recognize His voice in the hustle and bustle comes from stepping away daily to spend time with Him. Whatever routine you have: using a devotional, podcast, morning prayer, at home, at work, in the car. Whatever time you take throughout the day to be with the Lord, it will help to refocus you so that when you start losing your place in the overhead slides of life, you can ignore the panic and listen to His voice.
Much love in Christ
Heather