day no. 15,567 continued... vespers

I was listening to a sermon last week and the pastor was speaking to the Biblical theme of "morning and evening." After pointing out several places where this rhythm is established and held, he then provided the anecdotal evidence of its observance in the church cadence of "lauds and vespers." Admittedly, I had to look that up. I was fascinated to discover the morning and evening prayers pattern that once was a staple of the Christian church. 

I bring this up because this past week I also floated the idea of beginning to pick up a pie at the Amish each week now that we've moved it to Saturdays and I get to participated. I thought it would be fun to add to our Sabbath liturgy. 

So we picked up a mixed berry and a pecan pie yesterday and today after having Wendy's frosties and fries for lunch, I decided to hold back the pies for a treat after dinner. So tonight we ate noodles for dinner as per usual, but then I busted out the pies and we had sort of a second Sabbath soiree. That led me to consider perhaps holding the pie back every week for dinner rather than adding it to our lunch liturgy. This connected me to the thought of vespers and the idea of an intentional Sabbath evening mini-liturgy.

While I was carving up the post-dinner pies, I led us in singing "All Glory Be To Christ" which I had originally attempted to include as part of our lunch liturgy, but it didn't work out as well as I had hoped as it delayed the feast longer than made sense. It's fun now to be able to include back in at a natural point and in anticipation of pie. I bought whipped cream earlier today in preparation and made funny designs on each kid's respective piece of pie. I then intuitively said, "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!" The kids took to it and just like that, we have a Sabbath supper liturgy. I look forward to rounding it out a bit, but for now, I'm thinking less is more: singing, pie and Psalm 34:8 to cap off our Sabbaths sounds like a great Sunday tradition in the making. Some traditions you enjoy the first time you do them looking ahead to the thousandth time you do it. I am flirting with perhaps rocking the a la mode some week and calling it, "pie-ce cream." God is good and it is so much fun looking for ways to invite my kids into a life of wonder, welcome, good gifts and a whole heaping of gratitude to go along with it.

Psalm 34:8

Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!