Melody with Mimi Harmony

Before going further in today’s post, it would be helpful for you to check out the church service I attended this morning that I’ll be referencing. You can watch it here with Pueblo First Church of the Nazarene.

The service started with upcoming events, then at 5:22 we begin with a prayer and song. 12:53 we prayed for others and give tithes and offerings with head Pastor Jim (I truly hope you watch all the way through of course, but at least start here if not). Following is the sermon that I’ll be referencing.

Completely unrelated, brief topic change for a “paused for a moment and got distracted,” question: If you were a sauce, which would you be? I’d be hot honey.

Now onto my lesson learned about the topic proceeding church: I had an opportunity today to make connections with people on my returning flight back to Nashville. On my flight from Denver, the people around me waited until we landed to connect with each other and get to know each other. I wish I could have connected with at least one person today and preferably during the plane trip. My goodness I’m about to share an embarrassing lost opportunity I realized I had. Truly I share in hopes to see if it’s something we can all learn from.

I had just got on the plane and was walking down the aisle to find a window seat when a man sitting in an aisle seat of an empty row smiled at me. But I got nervous so I looked down and quickly I turned down the empty row on the other side of him and went all the way far right by the window. But I picked the one seat on the entire plane, that didn’t even have a window—even the man’s row had a window. I didn’t realize I had sat next to a wall.

Gosh I knew in that moment I should’ve considered a bit more or just seized the opportunity and smiled and asked for the window seat in his row. That’s all I had to do.

How embarrassing. Well then, a family with a toddler probably the age of one about to turn two (btw, the baby did so well the entire time), sat next to me. Well right before we landed poor baby was grabbing the papers from the cubby behind the seat and screeched so loud everyone turned their head to look.

Well finally we landed and the man who smiled brought down his guitar from the over head compartment. I thought to myself “oh well of course he’s a musician,” a way we could have connected because I come from a family of musicians.

When we got off and were walking to the terminal through that covered rickety ramp the man was talking to the family next to me and brought up how he misses that age—his son’s now 23.

Another face palm moment because I’m 23 too. If I had just asked to sit from the beginning I could have had a conversation with him.

All this to say, I’m grateful for learning to seize the day. Even though I didn’t I learned that I could have and it would have been okay. Pastor Jim mentioned that often times the reason we don’t is because of the fear of failure. But he said, “there’s room for failure on this journey but not for fear of failure, because it prevents us from having faith.” Earlier in this sermon referencing last week’s service and the themes that carry over, Pastor Jim mentioned that faith sometimes takes steps that are risky so we can have faith, but we can trust that if we take those steps through love (remembering that God is love) we can remember that we are loved and we are living the best we can through God’s words and we are trusting that God is much bigger and in control more than we ever could be. All we have to do is love one another and take our next steps day by day remembering to have faith in God’s love.

So I’ll try to keep you posted on the next opportunity I do take. I hope you let me know when you do too.

Wishing you a wonderful week ahead of walking with love to share and bravery to try the thing you’re afraid of.

With love, Mira (my Papa nickname for me)