A Glorious Sunday. Worship and a Great Breakfast
The Workshop Begins
Woke up at about 6:30 and decided to try and finish up yesterday's blog. The BIG dilemma was that I could ever get any hot water. So I didn't shower. Just had a cold shave. :(
When I went to leave, I checked at the front desk they weren't surprised and told me that you had to run the hot water for at least 20 minutes to get hot. At least that hopefully is solved.
Never heard from Crystal so I headed out toward Redeemer at about 8:15, got a venti and a classic coffee cake (dry/old) at Starbuck's and headed to the 116th street station. I had decided to try and make the 9:15 service on the westside at the Ethical Cultural Society at 64th and Central Park West. Very close to Lincoln Center.
Actually just a block from Bar Berloud that I had checked out on line earlier.
Worship at Redeemer Presbyterian
"Christ made himself nothing, that we might be something"
I got to the location by 8:45 and had my pick of the seats. It's was a gorgeous space with a balcony and old wooden pews. I sat down in the second row and began reading my Bible. At the back of the stage is painted a sign that read " The Place Where People Meet to Seek the Highest Is Holy Ground."
They bill the service as "Classical" just like the Hunter College location. But here they had just a piano and no organ. Because they had a piano they also had a woman who sang to lead the songs. Something they did not have with the organ at the other location. By the time the service started it was jam packed. It filled in about 15 minutes.
The pianist played various Brahms selections for the Prelude, Offertory and Postlude.
I thought Tim Keller was preaching but it turned out to be Associate Pastor John Lin. David Bisgrove, who I have heard preach before, handled all the other parts of the service.
The hymn selections were:
"Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing"
"Doxology" not a hymn, but we sang it
"O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus"
"Amazing Grace"
I was overwhelmed by the Spirit in the service. The hymns brought me to tears. What a joy it was to worship the living God. I felt like it was a deep draught of cool, clear water. As much as I enjoyed last night's shows this was 1000 times more satisfying.
The sermon title was "Humility" and was 12th sermon in a series: Practicing the Christian Life.
I will include a few random notes and phrases, perhaps not very coherent but stuff I want to remember.
"The Christian Life: Where what you know becomes what you do.
Truth must be inhaled, digested, then exhaled.
The practice of self forgetfulness
We "know" things, but do we "do" them?
Three parts
1. The glory we want, but do not have.
Do we heed a higher or lower view of ourselves?
"vain conceit" = empty glory
C.S. Lewis The Weight of Glory. We all want to be famous and luminous
2. The glory we seek but can not get.
We wrongly desire "empty glory".
The real problem is that we think of ourselves too much not whether we feel inferior or superior.
3. The glory we need but can not earn.
Christ made himself NOTHING that we might be SOMETHING.
Christ emptied himself of His glory on the cross. WHY? To make us glorious! To give the glory we never deserved. He is the glory we always wanted, but could never get on our own.
True humility = thinking of yourself less.
We do not deserve glory, but we have it. Jesus has the glory and he gave it.
No one is a threat to our glory. We already have it.
And so we need to be giving up our glory for others too, just as Christ did.
What a powerful sermon. Thank you Lord. You blessed me when I needed it most.
After the service I went down to the fellowship area and bought some CDs, looked at the books, and donated $10 to a trip their youth are taking to Uganda in August.
Breakfast at Good Enough to Eat
From there I took the subway back to 78th and walked over and up to Good Enough to Eat where I decided to have breakfast. 483 Amsterdam at 83rd. It's actually pretty close to Sarabeth's. I had read a lot about the place and decided to try it out. Two years ago I had dinner there, but it was always breakfast that I was really interested in.
The line up. Just like at Mama's in SF.
There was a line which I jumped in and only had to wait about 15 minutes. I was in a seat at the bar by 11:30. I had a huevos scramble with chorizo, peppers, a salad, and two tortillas and coffee. Then for dessert i had to try the coffee cake on the recommendation of the server. A million times better than the dry piece from Starbucks earlier in the morning. It all came to about $27 including tip. Really fun.
Since it had started raining I took a bus up to Amsterdam and 106th and walked the rest of the way in the rain.
St. John the Divine
The Workshop Begins
I got back to Carman at about one. Mary Kay had a schedule and we walked over to look at the rooms. I'm back in 477 Learner so that should work out well. I eventually went back and just hung around the room blogging and working on m theme session.
Pete got her about two and we chatted a while. Finally I got a tiny bit of hot water and got a shower however weak it was.
At some point we went down and registered and that was pretty weak. Rebecca really didn't even say hi when I met her in the hall. I went over to Lerner to try and figure our where I was going to do our big group theme session.
The schedule said the Learner Theatre, but we decided to move to the Party Space so we could set up the projector.
We started about 5:10 and Ed did his thing and we left about 5:40. Once everybody got there and we gor set up it was about 6.
I did the "Stand up if you…" as an opener and then did my theme presentation. We didn't have thems start working until about 7:15.
All in all it was a great opening to the workshop. I think everything is going to work our just fine.
Havana Central (the West End) for Dinner
We then all walked over to Havana Central for our traditional Sunday Night meal together.
For the first time we met in the back room and they brought an assortment of Cuban food for us. I loved the empenadas in particular. And of course the plaintains!
We also presented Ed with his own Mickey Mouse ears with "Edmund" embroidered on it. Quite a hoot.
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