{"id":2632,"date":"2014-01-20T16:51:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T16:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/?p=2632"},"modified":"2014-01-20T16:51:30","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T16:51:30","slug":"the-gift-of-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2014\/01\/20\/the-gift-of-church\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gift of Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t feel like going to church this past Sunday. \u00a0It was hard getting the family out the door. \u00a0I was tired. \u00a0I wasn’t in the mood for mauve carpets, praise music and a long sermon after the splendor of the Eucharist at St. Thomas Church<\/a> last week. \u00a0 \u00a0But a beautiful thing happened.<\/p>\n

There’s a young man who comes to our church with his family and who has a significant disability. \u00a0It’s the kind of disability that twists the body, distorts the countenance, and makes ordinary communication impossible. \u00a0 This young man seems to like me. \u00a0Maybe it’s because I do some work with disabled people and this sort of thing doesn’t phase me. \u00a0Maybe it’s because I can communicate with him a little better because of my son’s disability. \u00a0Maybe he knows I need a friend.<\/p>\n

After the service, he was sitting by himself and I went over to say hi. \u00a0Through a bit of improvised sign language, he told me he had a toothache and was going to the dentist. \u00a0He seemed delighted that I understood, and as is his way, gave me a big bear hug. \u00a0Then he signed “I love you,” and I signed “I love you too.”<\/p>\n

THERE was the Church: \u00a0a delight in understanding another person, a delight in being understood, a generous outpouring of heartfelt fellowship, and a sign of love that closes every distance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn’t feel like going to church this past Sunday. \u00a0It was hard getting the family out the door. \u00a0I was tired. \u00a0I wasn’t in the mood for mauve carpets, praise music and a long sermon after the splendor of the Eucharist at St. Thomas Church last week. \u00a0 \u00a0But a beautiful thing happened. There’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spirit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-Gs","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}