Interesting Experience

This morning something interesting happened to me. Everything was a little behind schedule this morning and when I went out to the car to take Garin to school, there was a little yellow band-aid on the hood of my car. I thought, "Wow, the neighborhood girls must have thought my car had a boo-boo." I picked it off and didn't think much about it. After taking Garin into her school, I came back to my car only to discover when I opened the door that something fell out into the parking lot. I got out and picked it up: a hand sanitizer bottle. It wasn't my favorite kind and I thought someone had just left it in the car. Then I looked down at the little trash bin on the side of the doors and thought, "Well, the girls have been in here decorating." There were several small bottles lined up in the door and I giggled as I pictured them sneaking into my car and putting sanitizer and lotion in my car - not sure if I was missing a hint. I put the rogue sanitizer into the console and put my key into the ignition to leave, when I also noticed that there were sunglasses in the car that aren't mine. As I looked around, there was a bunch of stuff in the car that wasn't mine...
Yep, I had gotten into the wrong car. Same make, same color, same interior, but parked one spot over from my car. I got out laughing at myself and walked over to my car hoping the owner of pseudo-car wasn't right behind me. As I drove off from the school, I got to thinking about a story in the bible where Jesus is sitting around a table talking to a group of religious people. As they prepared for the communion meal, Jesus spoke of the dangers of cleaning the outside of

the cup, but not paying attention to what's on the inside. In our world today, we may not wrestle with cup-cleaning as the people Jesus was addressing, but we do tend to worry about appearance and how things look. In relation to church attendance and activity, we sometimes spend more time worrying about our outside than our inside.
When I was at Baylor, there were actually students who would skip church on Sundays, but put on nice enough clothes to go downstairs and eat in the cafeteria so everyone would think they had been to church. Uuuugggghhhh! One of my hidden joys in life is to go to an early service - or even a Saturday service, then go to lunch all ragged out on Sunday, and laugh on the inside at everyone who feels sorry for me and is trying to figure out if they should tell me about Jesus while I'm standing in line to get my sweet tea at Red River BBQ...ah, the games we play. You know them. How do you feel on Sundays when we don't gather at the Y? Do you feel like you need to go to church somewhere? Do you feel like you're not right if you aren't doing a bible study this semester? What things do you feel like you "have to do" as a Christian? What if I change my radio station from 89.3, will God still be there to listen? If I don't get up in the morning and have a "quiet time" will I still be able to talk to God later that day - and will He still speak to me? If I don't go to my small group, will I still be able to experience community like God wants for me?
If my current Christian experiences are not really transforming me into loving my neighbors more, then is it really all worth it? Lots of questions...do you have any?