From Spaghetti Saturday to Psalm Sunday
In the Knight house on Route 2 in Pelzer, South Carolina it was just another spaghetti Saturday. Aunt Nancee obliged this ritual for my cousin, Ben, who simply wanted spaghetti every Saturday for lunch.
Farming is hard work and I’m sure spaghetti provides sustenance for the day’s remaining chores and some joy too. My observation was that other households, even first cousin ones, followed different routines than the Cheathams. Even if I had desired such a routine, I’m convinced my mother would not have provided it. The two homes were as different as Aunt Nancee and my mother. In those days, the observation sufficed.
Experience is the subjective and varied means whereby truth rises into our consciousness. Life’s layered moments never follow a straight line nor live at the pace of nature; they come as the wind.
Truth weaves its way through our striving like a tree winding its way toward light above the forest. I knew my mother loved me as much as Aunt Nancee loved cousin Ben, just differently.
I’m living my own routine now. An observer could call it Psalm Sunday. This is the day I spend reading Psalms. It’s appropriate. It’s not spaghetti, but the reading brings me the same sustenance and joy. After all, Psalms is the prayer and praise book of the Bible. The Sabbath remains God’s Holy day for spiritual feeding and thanks. The other six remain no less revealing.
“Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God” (Romans 15:7, NKJV). In his letter to the Romans, Paul told me how to glorify God. The simple truth is there in the reading, but it took time to puncture its way into my consciousness. Time suppresses as much as reveals. My journey began on those spaghetti Saturdays.
I can think of no other way to define Church than this simple truth — to receive others as Christ received us. Living it is as praiseworthy as any Psalm I have read. I can think of no other way to “make a joyful noise to the Lord.” It’s time to get on with it. Our striving toward any other path is in vain. “For whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23, NKJV). To paraphrase Christ, “what is gain without love?”
I was always welcomed in the Knight home. Yes, it was family, but not all families accept each other. I ate spaghetti on Saturday. I enjoyed the ritual different than home. Visiting Route 2, Pelzer, South Carolina was a delight to me. I remember thinking I could eat spaghetti every Saturday.
Truth comes from faith. No sin ever answered my questions as faith has. Faith became the binding between those subjective experiences, the means by which I heard God’s truth — receive one another as Christ received me, as I was received on those spaghetti Saturdays, a truth I praise on Psalm Sunday.
I remain His listening servant. “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” (Matthew 11:15, NKJV).