Die Gemütlichkeit

The tour officially ended Saturday evening, April 28th. My flight home was not until Sunday afternoon, so I very much wanted to attend a church in Darmstadt, a suburb of Frankfurt where we had finished the tour.

Well, easier said than done. I asked at the hotel front desk about nearby churches and service times. The young woman at the desk put a lot of effort into helping me: The map she gave me had the symbols of churches on it, but not their names and the service times. She checked the phone book, and it didn't even have churches listed. The local newspaper had a listing of church names and service times, but not the addresses for those churches.

Not to be deterred, however (after all, I am a bold woman of the 21st century), I thanked her and decided that I would walk to what appeared on the map to be the closest church and see what time they had services. During my two weeks in Germany I had gathered that 10 a.m. was a pretty standard service time. The church on the map looked to be not more than a half hour walk from the hotel, so I set out about 9:30 a.m.

Before I reached the point on my map where there appeared to be a church, I heard church bells nearby. So, being the bold and intrepid woman that I am (being a bit of a stubborn German American doesn't hurt either), I simply followed the sound of the bells, which led me to Evangelische Friedensgemeinde Darmstadt (Peace Lutheran Church Darmstadt).

The service began at 10 a.m. with a familiar hymn, "Sing to the Lord of Harvest," in German,of course. I took some German in college, but unfortunately, most of that learning had flown out of my head in the ensuing 19 years of not using it. During the two-week trip, some of the German I had learned had come back to me, but I certainly wouldn't claim to be able to speak German.

An amazing thing happened,as the congregation stood to sing the hymn: I bounded out of the pew and began singing the hymn with gusto in German. I was so totally in the moment of being there in Germany with Germans and praising God that I absolutely forgot that German was not my native language.

The experience, 'tho brief, almost brought me to tears of joy, though, as I realized that, if even for a brief moment, I became like a child, as Jesus asks of us. What I mean is that for a moment, I checked my rational, adult mind at the door of the church (the rational mind that would remind me that I don't know how to pronounce certain words in German, or that German is not my native language, and I really don't know or understand it) and opened up my heart and soul to praise God in whatever forms that would take.

Through my becoming like a child, the Holy Spirit began to work and allowed that time of singing to be such a time of pure awe and adoration of God that I think it defies explanation in any language.

The Holy Spirit is so ready and willing to work in us, if we would just find the eyes of children so that we could recognize the Holy Spirit and take hold and become absorbed in the moments of our lives.