BGLASS Worship

BGLASS Worship was phenomenal. It was exciting to be a part of such an amazing worship service. We focused on the beatitudes and figuring out our roles as the salt of the earth. We read scripture, we sang and we lit candles. The amazing David Norse preached and his words truly touched me. After the service I told him that I had wished that the 14-year old me had been able to hear it. Heck, he talked about things that the 22-year old me is still fighting to deal with.
I think I truly appreciated that so many people turned out for the BGLASS worship because something like that would not occur in many other settings that I have been in. On top of that, just as the service was starting we saw police cruiser and a fire truck on the quad. I was worried that it would interfere with worship but people came in. The Seminary's President, a few professors and the campus chaplain were in the chapel worshiping with us. It is great to see and truly realize that I am in a welcoming and embracing community.
During the service, as our offering we wrote down what our personal goal is for the year, what we plan on working on, how we plan on showing our light. Personally for me, I want to learn to be more true to myself so that I can figure out how to show my light to others and help them do the same. I love BGLASS

My Modern First Pentecost

So today is Pentecost and as is expected the Pastor lady preached about the first Pentecost. There was the swooshing of spirit, flames and everyone speaking in many different languages. She spoke about how everyone would have been praising God in a language they understood but there would be many languages all at the same time. What I instantly thought of was an experience I had last summer. Last sumer I served as a Steward for the World Communion of Reformed Churches. The official languages of the WCRC assembly were English, Spanish  French, and German. The vast majority of our printed materials were in all four of these languages, including the worship materials. For close to a month I got used to hearing everything in these four languages. However, during worship people would speak in their own languages. At one point during a worship service I looked around and heard people praying in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Thai, Korean, Chinese, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Hindi, and other languages I couldn't even begin to identify.

To me, this is a small glimpse of what I can only imagine the first Pentecost was like.