Sometimes you’ll pick a little up at Christmas worship. Or maybe at Easter. Perhaps a child you know gets excited about a project they worked on in Sunday School and as they explain it to you, a little bit of it stays with you. Once in a while you go to a wedding or a quinceanera and when you get home at the end of the day you look in the mirror and realize you’ve brought home a little something extra from the day.
I’m talking, of course, about glitter.
There aren’t many places in the church where you can’t find at least a little glitter. It shows up in tiny specs that you only see if the light hits it just right, and in big chunks that you can’t miss. In some ways, the big chunks are easier to deal with. They can be picked up by hand, or vacuumed, or ignored completely, which is often the case. But the tiny glitter… it is pervasive. You see it, and by the time you bring the lint roller over to try to pick it up, you can’t find it any more. So it lies in wait until the next time the light hits it and you are reminded of whatever event brought the glitter to church in the first place.
I find that glitter has a lot in common with Sunday morning worship. Not that we tend to be too flashy, but we go home carrying bits of it with us. It might be a tune stuck in our head or a line from the sermon. Maybe just an idea or a feeling that gets us going for the week. Maybe it’s the sense of fellowship we get from a familiar community.
Do we remember every moment from Sunday morning? No. I help plan Sunday worship and even I can’t hold on to all the thoughts and ideas from week to week. But just like that elusive glitter, these little pieces of Sunday morning lodge themselves in unexpected corners of our lives. They might not be immediately apparent, but when the right situation arises – a moment of doubt, a need for encouragement, a chance to offer compassion – that tiny, previously unnoticed fragment of worship sparkles to the surface. It reminds us of a truth we heard, a feeling we shared, or a connection we made.
The beauty of this lingering "glitter" of worship is its subtlety. It's not about perfectly remembering every detail, but about the gentle, persistent influence of the sacred in our everyday lives. It's about the way the messages of love, grace, and justice seep into our consciousness and shape our interactions with the world.
So, the next time you find a stray speck of glitter clinging to your clothes or sparkling on your floor, perhaps it can serve as a reminder of the less tangible, yet equally persistent, gifts we receive each time we gather for worship. These are the little pieces of the holy that we carry with us, often unseen, but always present, ready to shimmer when the light hits them just right, guiding us and reminding us of the deeper truths that sustain us. And just like that glitter, the impact of our shared worship extends far beyond the walls of the church, subtly and beautifully coloring the world around us.
John Johns