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Mind your Step


It's over a week now since I told you of my first ever reading in church as an 8 year old cub scout... Obadobadiah 1-11.

Well it's a complete miracle that I ever wanted to be found in a pulpit again after that experience, because I made a complete buffoon of myself that morning. Not by mispronouncing the name of the book... No, my Mum had beat that out of me during rehearsals at home.

What happened was that after I finished I turned round and went to descend from the pulpit only to find the minister mouthing something at me in an exagerated fashion. "Argh!" I thought, "I've forgotten to say, 'Amen!'"

You see, during my rehearsals at home I kept forgetting to say "Amen!" as I had been told to, after the reading, because it wasn't there on the page...

So, having seen the minister mouthing this correction to me, I turned on my heel, went back to the lectern and leant into the microphone to say "Amen!" The only amen in history to be responded to by raucous laughter on the part of the congregation.

The thing is, some years later I discovered that the minister in question was not mouthing "Amen!" but "Mind your step" which is what he always said to people unused to speaking in that pulpit, fearful of them missing the step and falling headlong (which is something I did 7 years later, but that's another story).

Mind your step... How often does that describe some people's attitude to God? Keep your head down and watch where you're going incase you trip up...
So many people's lives are paralysed by fear... whether it be fear of seeming ridiculous, or out of step in the eyes of others... or fear of God, and we're not talking about the sort that is supposed to be the beginning of wisdom...
I wish I could recapture the confident naivety of that 8 year old cub-scout who wasn't put off by the laughter of God's people at his expense, and couldn't imagine a minister telling him to "mind your step."


Counters
Selah
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