First Church of the Frigidaire

It was fairly cold this morning.

Now, living in Minnesota, saying that it's cold in January is kind of like announcing that African-Americans were happy when Obama won the Iowa caucus...not real surprising news. (Although our local paper used the freedom of its press to actually run that shocking story...)

On a particularly cold Sunday morning, there are at least three choices a person has as to what to do:
   1)  A person could stay in bed under a down comforter, warm and cozy;
   2)  A person could force himself to get up, get dressed, and head to church; or,
   3)  If they wanted to remove all doubt as to their level of complete insanity, they could strip to the waist, paint themselves green and yellow and go to an outdoor stadium to watch football.

You may be surprised to learn that I am not recommending choice number three. But equally surprising may be my recommendation that, when faced with these choices, a person would be wise to head to a church building for Sunday worship.

Attending a Sunday morning service has all sorts of possibilities for warming you up:

• Lots of people in the same room...hello?
• There's always at least one terminally-joyful woman who will give you a hug guaranteed to spike your temp a degree or two.
• If you clap along with the songs, circulation should return to your fingers.
• Plenty of hot air coming from the pulpit.
• If your church uses wine for communion, take multiple trips to the altar. It won't really warm you up, but you won't care.

And best of all, after the service is over, we crank up the heat in the baptistry and turn on the air jets: "Ladies and gentlemen, the holy hot tub is open!"