To the Point
Describe a meaningful worship experience that you’ve had outside of a church building or service.
A number of years ago, I went to hear a concert given by a high school group of auditioned voices in which a neighbor girl participated. Although I cannot recall the title or composer of the first selection, I vividly remember the magnitude of the voices and the straightforward explosiveness of the sound that just blew me away as the choir sang a text similar to “Shout to the Lord with joy.” In my spirit, I felt “to God be the glory.”
Loine Bert, Manheim (Pa.) BIC
On October 10, 1969, my father received his final summons and was translated to heaven. As soon as my wife and I received word, we drove to the Messiah Home in Harrisburg, Pa., where he and my stepmother had been living. We’d been there about 20 minutes when it suddenly occurred to me that I had not paid any respects to Father’s body. So I walked over to the side of the bed and looked down at the lifeless body of my father.
In all of life’s solemn moments, the appropriate response from deep within me is to pray. I had begun to pray silently for my father when I felt a stirring inside me—a voiceless, inaudible shout that said, This is not your father. He’s with me. I accepted the rebuke and prayed instead a prayer of thanksgiving for godly parents who had served their generation to the best of their abilities. And I prayed that God would help me to serve my generation as faithfully. It was one of the deepest of spiritual experiences I have had, ranking along with my call to missionary service and to an experience I had soon after the loss of my own beloved wife years later.
David E. Climenhaga, Messiah Village BIC (Mechanicsburg, Pa.)
It was the summer of 1988 on a family trip to General Conference, and we had just entered Idaho. Ahead of us were dark clouds from the storms that had just come ahead of us, leaving the world rain-washed, shimmering, and sparkling. To our south, there was a double rainbow, complete end to end. The first arc was the most beautiful I had ever seen, and the second was clear and bright and about as good as most other rainbows I’ve ever seen. We followed those rainbows for more than a half hour.
Earl Herr, Martinsburg (Pa.) BIC
Maybe it’s because I grew up in the western United States that the out-of-doors and worship are firmly merged in my memories, many of which go back to the American Sunday School Union camp of my early teen years. Located an hour or so north of Missoula, Mont., Camp Utmost was situated on a dusty stretch of land flanked on either side by mountain ranges. When we campers gathered for morning and evening worship in the open-air chapel, the songs we raised—always in full voice—reverberated off the mountainsides, extending our praise for several seconds beyond our singing. To my young ears, this was the sound of heaven, and God could not have been more real or close.
Rebekah Basinger, Grantham (Pa.) BIC
