{"id":9367,"date":"2022-07-11T03:21:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T03:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9367"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:09","slug":"absence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9367","title":{"rendered":"ABSENCE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had the opportunity to preach this morning at Hope United Methodist Church on Galatians 2:10, where Peter, James, and John send Paul on his way asking him only to &#8220;continue to remember the poor&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was my first time to be back in my mother&#8217;s church since she passed away almost three years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I underestimated how it would hit me emotionally.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Melissa began wiping away tears as we sang the hymn just before I stood up to preach, and that couldn&#8217;t help but trigger tears of my own.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you didn&#8217;t know my mom, you might not know that she had a powerful singing voice. It was one of her greatest gifts. So it was during the hymns this morning that her absence was most noticeable.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even though it was painful, I loved hearing from the pastor and many church members this morning how much they miss my mother&#8217;s presence.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I do too.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEgZkgadzXb-C34tbizChC2SJFvkJJwy50Nj9V4rFxVxgvviY36dl3c_BkgjTMjHPW0izvvD8CIEKE75_fTiHtl6T46s58fVCuUKckH5RuMnLzVMYQStwgZz-yfFRgd_1imzzIPe__yzP51KHcFKyADYCuA8ASJp0I-gvQBJ-3VCXQ_DkrWBLKGruPj_\/w480-h640\/20220710_112707%20(1).jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1079\" height=\"1438\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had the opportunity to preach this morning at Hope United Methodist Church on Galatians 2:10, where Peter, James, and John send Paul on his way asking him only to &#8220;continue to remember the poor&#8221;.\u00a0 It was my first time to be back in my mother&#8217;s church since she passed away almost three years ago.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9370,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9367\/revisions\/9370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}