I missed church tonight.

I don't go to Wednesday night services anymore. Truth be told, and now that I'm about to move it's probably the only time I could have actually told the truth about this, but I don't go anymore simply because I hate studying about end times.

Yes. Armageddon will happen. Yes, bowls of wrath will be poured out. Yes, 70 weeks, yes 1,000 years, yes 7 bowls and 7 seals and 7 trumpets, 1 harlot and 1 beast, yes and yes.

My dad wrote a book about it, he gives me a new preaching cd every single month about it, the last 10 times I've heard him preach in person were about the end times. He has a standard rule of how the first time he preaches somewhere he will preach his stance on the end times and if he ever gets invited back then he might move on to other topics. With my end-times scholar for a dad we've studied Revelation, Daniel, and Ezekiel chapter by chapter, verse by verse enough times that I stopped counting. It's a lot though. Add into that the supper-time debates on end times (though to be fair we also went back and forth about predestination - ahhh childhood).

I'm absolutely sick of the end times. And for the record, yes, I understand that as a Christian looking forward to Christs return I should be most interested in this information so I too can watch the signs.

And while I'm sick of it, it doesn't mean that it's bad for my church to be studying about it. It's a good thing. Really. But as they go chapter by chapter through Revelation and Ezekiel (I'm not sure where they are at now), I finally just stopped going.

But for some reason, about 10 o'clock tonight it hit me that it was Wednesday. And I suddenly felt deeply deeply sad that I had missed it.

And then I smiled.

While I am still sorry to have missed out, I was very happy to realize that some of that old love for my people and my church was there again and wonderful. I haven't loved them like I should. I knew it. So this sudden regret, this disappointment for missing out, was terrific to experience. I've got two Wednesdays left before the move and I don't have to be disappointed next week.

And I can hardly wait.