Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

A chance meeting at a jewelry party reminded me that I should have gone to church.

I don’t sleep in on Sunday mornings very often. I’m a clergy spouse and a diocesan staff member and mother of two kids who love hanging out with their church buddies. But we just finished diocesan convention and 3 ½ hour drive home so hunkering down on a rainy morning won out.

But I was able to roust myself for an afternoon jewelry party with some girlfriends. When I filled out the order form, the jewelry representative asked me about my diocesan e-mail address. Turns out she’s an Episcopalian in our diocese, about two hours from home.

The day before I helped her 85-year-old father, a convention delegate from another church, find the line for the boxed lunches.

We traded stories about people we knew. Then she confessed: She hadn’t gone to church that morning either. But, she said, I think God planned for us to meet.

She had been thinking about how she could help the wider church. Now she had a connection. She offered to pick a piece of jewelry to sell in the diocese, with 100 percent of the profits to be donated to our community services foundation.

She flipped through the magazine. This one, she said.

A mustard seed hangs from the chain, with a locket that reads, “Faith.”

Even when I pull the covers over my head instead of gathering for worship with my church family, God is at work. Sometimes it feels like my faith is big and out-front and sometimes as small as the mustard seed.

But thank God for the mustard seed, the least of seeds, sometimes planted in the least likely of places, that sown may grow to be “the greatest among herbs and become a tree, so that the bird of the air come and lodge in the branches.”

And next Sunday, we’ll both be at church.