Urgent Need

“Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead,” my husband was preaching from James.

I happened to turn and glance over my shoulder at the kitchen where two ladies were making a potluck meal.

A third lady stood toward the back of the entryway waving frantically.

I wondered if she might be gesturing to her children, but when I blinked a second time, she raised both hands, doubling her insistence. I could tell she had an urgent need.

I stood and walked to the back. Before I got to the lady, I encountered a swiftly moving stream that was entering the kitchen. I knew it was coming from the ladies’ restroom.

I don’t know which child clogged that toilet, but he or she kept the secret long enough to submerge the back half of the church in an inch of water. I was looking around for the Ark before I got to the toilet in question.

I pulled up the skirt of my dress and tied it in a knot and hastily removed the tank cover. I held the float up while one of the deacons hurried in behind me to turn the water access off.

Then, the Church was activated. The lady who had alerted me came with the mop. Another lady knew where to get the church towels and brought the whole stack. The deacon mopped. I mopped. The ladies mopped. The two ladies kept cooking potluck after they moved the trash can and other items out of the flood. Another man brought bleach. 

My husband preached. 

“The Fruit of the Spirit is evidence of a faith alive, a living faith that proves that the Holy Spirit of the Living God dwells inside of you.” 

We wrung towels. We found another mop head. We dried the floor on hands and knees. We mopped again with bleach. We carried the towels outside.

We washed our hands and joined the final prayer. We prayed for those who went forward to ask for the Lord’s help in resisting temptation, for the children who asked for prayer for their lost parents, for all the many urgent needs we know there are in our community.

And we sat down to eat together, wildly sweaty, feeling like another pump of hand sanitizer might be a good idea, knowing that the patient perseverance of the Church showed those works that could only have come from faith in a God who lives, who sees, who knows, and who empowers each one of us to love our neighbor like we love ourselves- whether they clog the toilet or not. 

It isn’t the way we’d choose for Sunday morning worship to go, but it was the Body of Christ working together, listening to the Word of God while cleaning the excrement of the world with efficiency, patience, and love.

It’s how the Church should act whenever there is an urgent need because Jesus helped us in our need.