{"id":2138,"date":"2022-11-15T07:55:24","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T12:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2138"},"modified":"2022-11-15T07:55:56","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T12:55:56","slug":"sunday-smiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/15\/sunday-smiles\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Smiles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>.
 
Author Martha Grace Reece once interviewed a woman who had sat in the front row of her church choir every Sunday for 30 years.
 
\u201cWhy do you go to church?  What do you get out of it?\u201d
 
Her husband of 35 years had just died slowly and painfully.  Horror stories pocked her memories of her marriage and raising the children.  She answered, \u201cChurch has always meant a lot to me because I knew that if things got really bad, I could tell someone about it.\u201d
 
Reece asked if she ever had <\/em>talked with anyone about anything really bad.  \u201cNo,\u201d she answered, \u201cBut I always knew that I could <\/em>have.\u201d
 
It\u2019s ironic that so many of us think of a relationship with God is equivalent to keeping a generator in the storage closet in case the power goes out.
 
At church we put on our Sunday smiles \u2013 lying to ourselves and to each other that life isn\u2019t really a struggle much of the time.  We pretend that we\u2019re doing just fine, thank you.  We\u2019re keeping our acts together.  We don\u2019t even need God\u2019s blessing.
 
Who are we fooling?
 
The simplest way to describe our standing before God is that we are flashlights without batteries.
 
Apart from the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, we\u2019re not going to make it through the challenges before us.  Let alone draw our next breath.
 
Becoming aware of that stark dependence is the first and most important step in experiencing spiritual vitality.
 
And that means we don\u2019t have to fake it with each other. 
 
After all, in the most important way possible, we\u2019re all equal:  We stand in equal need of God\u2019s grace.
 
The fact that God is so able and willing to share it is the world\u2019s best reason to smile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Author Martha Grace Reece once interviewed a woman who had sat in the front row of her church choir every Sunday for 30 years. \u201cWhy do you go to church?  What do you get out of it?\u201d Her husband of 35 years had just died slowly and painfully.  Horror stories pocked her memories of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-2138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-authenticity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2138"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2141,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions\/2141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}