I have known Ken and Bonnie Smith for many years.  Ken came to the island on the last weekend of April to provide Restorative Justice training for a number of our folks.  I asked him to stay over on Sunday morning to share in the morning service.  The following is Ken’s message.

People from my past, those who offered words of advice or held some special place in my life have started to make more sense to me.  Things that they have said or stood for have come back to speak to me once again.  Those dormant memories are triggered by a variety of different things.  I am not sure that I can even begin to identify them.  Perhaps God brings them back at the time that I really need to remember.

At any rate, I am thankful and somewhat ashamed.  There is a truckload of wisdom that I have rejected on my journey.  I thought that I was the smart, current, informed one … in reality I was not mature enough to hear.

I suspect my experience is not atypical.

And here I stand in my 60th year.  I am blessed beyond words.  I am less certain of the things that don’t matter and more certain of the things that do.  There are fewer things that really matter than I once imagined.

I think my Dad was more right about spiritual things than I thought.  He saw a HUGE God and life as the main event.  Worship was not smoke, mirrors and music but merely paying attention to what was happening all around.  It wasn’t confined or defined by a Sunday gathering and theologically or denominationally boxed deities.  God was Holy, Wild, Unpredictable and Love beyond our ability to comprehend.  Yet we could know Him fully.

He loved the mornings … I thought he was “tetched” …

For the last 4 Wednesdays I have been at the church with the coffee pot on at 6:00am, the first hour of the day.  I am here in case you want to come and chat about something or nothing in particular.

So far no one has come.  I am so “OK” with that.  You see I don’t want to start another program.  I lost faith in them a long time ago.

I saw programs choke the life out of already busy families.

I saw programs keep people so busy inside the walls of the church that they never had time to care for people who will likely never come inside those walls.

I am just here because I think I am supposed to be.  I am here because I now love the early mornings as well.  God doesn’t drink coffee but He has been here every Wednesday morning.  We have talked and I have been enriched as always by that … and changed in so many ways.  Honest to goodness.  This is not preacher-talk.

If you ever have reason to pass by, stop in.  They say that the early bird gets the worm. I’d never get up early for worms.  I would get up early for this time at the church.