Snow Shoveling, Church Style...

Clearing The Snow

The call came in at 7am. I was not expecting our phone to ring at 7am this morning, but ring it did. If I thought a call was coming, I would have gone to bed earlier last night. "I'm at the church and we've got some snow to clear. Could you call Brother _____ and let him know we could use some help this morning? He signed the list to help shovel snow at the church."

"Wasn't the time to meet at the church on Sunday morning when it snowed 8am?" I asked, but really I pleaded for permission to go back to sleep. "Was it 8am? Well, it's 7am now and I'm here, so 7am? 8am? I'm not sure--just as long as we get it done before people start showing up."

I hung up the phone. I did call my neighbor and reminded him that since he signed up to help shovel snow, I was calling in the obligation. My son, just finishing up his breakfast, accompanied me and we drove to the church. There weren't too many of us, but we were able to clear the sidewalks quickly (I say quickly because the one who called did most of the work before we arrived...). We were lucky not to have had a lot of snow last night.

Because of our church schedule our congregation is responsible to clear the walks if the Sabbath greets us with snow. This snow shoveling schedule only happens every three years, and this winter has been very mild so far. We've been lucky. Shoveling snow wasn't that big of a deal today, but getting that 7am call on a cold Sunday morning, that's another story...