devotional

The rehearsal notice

Ruby Hayes

— 2 min read
Share
Watercolor interior of a small stone church during a summer service, with wooden pews, a few congregants, a cross on the front wall, and sunlight through tall windows.

"It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night." — Psalm 92:1-2

I was at Trinity this morning and the bulletin board in the narthex had a new notice about choir rehearsals starting the first week of September.

I stood in front of it longer than the notice deserved. It was typed on white paper and pinned with a thumbtack and it said the things a choir rehearsal notice says, which is when and where and that new members are welcome. But what I heard when I read it was September. September is coming. The choir is getting ready. The church is preparing for the year to start again, the way the church starts its year every fall, with rehearsals and rallies and the sound of people coming back from wherever August sent them.

The sanctuary was warm and thin. Fourteen people, maybe fifteen. Edna was there. The Millers were there. Mrs. Patterson was in her usual pew with the church fan moving at its usual pace. Pastor Holloway preached on faithfulness, which is a good word for a small August congregation that has shown up when showing up was easier to skip.

We sang "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" and I sang it from the place in my chest where the old hymns live. Morning by morning new mercies I see. I have sung that line in this sanctuary since I was thirty years old and the line has not worn out. The mercies are new this morning the way they were new when I first learned to mean them, which is the whole point of the hymn, which is also the whole point of the morning.

The pastoral prayer was long and quiet and I closed my eyes and I listened to Pastor Holloway name the things the congregation was carrying and I added my own things to his list, silently, the way I do. The woman who lost her husband. The children who will be back in a month. The choir that is getting ready. The year that is turning underneath the heat.

I drove home with the windows down and the air was August air and I thought about the notice on the bulletin board and I thought about September and I thought about nothing at all. The showing-up is the thing. It has always been the thing. Even on the Sundays when the pews are thin and the fan is the loudest sound in the room.

Lord, great is your faithfulness. Morning by morning.