Feet to the fire

The preacher held our feet to the fire this morning but somehow mine never got warm. Furnace malfunction. The temperature stayed in the single digits outside and in the mid-50s inside, but in a drafty church with cold wood floors, 55 is not warm enough.

Now it's not unusual for me to be cold in church; most winter Sunday mornings I layer up the long johns, wool socks, and multiple sweaters, and I keep an afghan on hand in the pew for added warmth. Some Sundays I don't even take off my coat in church. But today was different: today everyone kept their coats on. (Except the preacher. He never gets cold.)

Maybe if we made a habit of moving around a little more we wouldn't be so cold. This might be a good time to start waving our arms and running up and down the aisles. Would it hurt to genuflect? The exercise would get the blood flowing, and the creaking of arthritic knees would distract us from the cold.

I ought to be able to worship without warmth,. Think of the early Christians meeting in the musty catacombs! Think of medieval cathedrals with their drafts and dampness and cold stone floors! Think of worshipers huddling together in the heart of Siberia!

Or think of the time a few years ago when another church had a furnace malfunction on the day the children's choir was prepared to perform the annual Christmas program. The children had been practicing for weeks and they were bursting with excitement, but would their moms and dads and grandparents be willing to sit for an hour in an unheated sanctuary on the coldest day of the year?

The were and they did. The church was packed with worshipers sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in wool coats, hats, and gloves while the children dressed in flimsy angel and lamb costumes sang their little hearts out at the front of the church. I was so busy directing the show that I never noticed the cold, and the children seemed to produce their own heat. No one complained about cold feet.

I want to be like those children, and not just when the furnace is broken. If a congregation can't produce a little heat and light, what's the point of being there? I want to focus so much on the mission and the message that I won't even notice the temperature, but I'm clearly not there yet. Maybe my cold feet will send me to my knees. It's never too late to learn to genuflect.