Psalm 119:145-176
Acts 8:14-25
John 6:1-16
A Sunday evening in April 1962. The church, the mission church in a converted garage on the housing estate where I lived. A group of teenagers each wearing their school uniform, mine a bottle green gym slip a square neck white blouse. We girls each had a white napkin-like cloth on our head as a veil. We were dedication our life to Jesus and the church.
It was a sort of rite of passage. The sort of thing one did when one was twelve or thirteen years old. I don't know why other kids did it but I believed that I was a Christian because I believed in God and Jesus and I wanted to be a member of the church. So I was confirmed.
I was annoyed, probably encouraged in this attitude by my mother, because I was wearing a boring school uniform instead of a pretty, and probably over the top white dress was the habit at confirmation in other churches. My veil was falling off my head, or at least I thought it was and spent most of the service anxious that it would not slip down the back of my neck and arrive on the floor. my hair you seen was very fine and shiny. That day it was extra slippery because of course I had washed it so that I would be sparkling clean for the special occasion. Thus I knelt before the Bishop who put his chubby hands on my head and said some words. The hands caused my anxiety to increase. Surely he would not disturb the uneasy equilibrium of the veil and overcome the scanty strength of the two bobby pins holding the white veil. That would be mortifying and embarrassing- yes both together. It felt as if the thing was going to slip. The hands set my head tingle as if with pins and needles. Surely the veil was going to slip. But no. I managed to get up and return to my seat with all due decorum.
"17Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. "
And so it was with me though it took years before I realized what had happened. Sometimes the jigsaw pieces never fit together to make sense to us but they do to God who is fitting them together.
It was a sort of rite of passage. The sort of thing one did when one was twelve or thirteen years old. I don't know why other kids did it but I believed that I was a Christian because I believed in God and Jesus and I wanted to be a member of the church. So I was confirmed.
I was annoyed, probably encouraged in this attitude by my mother, because I was wearing a boring school uniform instead of a pretty, and probably over the top white dress was the habit at confirmation in other churches. My veil was falling off my head, or at least I thought it was and spent most of the service anxious that it would not slip down the back of my neck and arrive on the floor. my hair you seen was very fine and shiny. That day it was extra slippery because of course I had washed it so that I would be sparkling clean for the special occasion. Thus I knelt before the Bishop who put his chubby hands on my head and said some words. The hands caused my anxiety to increase. Surely he would not disturb the uneasy equilibrium of the veil and overcome the scanty strength of the two bobby pins holding the white veil. That would be mortifying and embarrassing- yes both together. It felt as if the thing was going to slip. The hands set my head tingle as if with pins and needles. Surely the veil was going to slip. But no. I managed to get up and return to my seat with all due decorum.
"17Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. "
And so it was with me though it took years before I realized what had happened. Sometimes the jigsaw pieces never fit together to make sense to us but they do to God who is fitting them together.
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