With Dr. Blount’s message ringing in our ears, and World Communion a few days away, I offer bread, broken and otherwise, most of it twitterable . . .

I read recently that our metropolitan area will increase by about a million people over the next decade. I thought to myself, “Will we miss this growth spurt as we have missed so many?” We haven’t missed them all. A number of our very healthy congregation’s just inside or outside the beltway were new church developments back in the sixties. We paid attention to the need for new churches and have reaped the harvest. However, since that time (almost half a century ago!), we have, for the most part, missed one growth spurt after another.

Once I was a single 20-something pastor. Then I became a young married person in my early 30s who swiftly became mother to three kids born in less than four years. Now I’m the mother of three young adults and one day I might be a mother-in-law or a grandmother. But I never want to forget what it was like to be a single working girl or a minivan-driving mom with three car seats strapped in and a part-time pastorate. Or the mom of elementary school kids with science projects. Or the mom of middle school kids or high school kids with relationship dramas and travel teams and standardized testing.

Do we play with God? Do we lose ourselves in joyful worship like little kids dancing under the water-hose in the sun?