Murder at Morningstar

It may have been a coincidence, but it seemed like fate, after my post on violence, that our church’s Valentine’s Banquet turned out to have a Murder Mystery theme!

I was telling my corny co-workers about the “Murder at Morningstar” theme, and one of them commented, “Of course, someone is going to die. You’re having it at a nursing home!”

Ha. Ha.

Despite the strange destination, the Hall of World Cultures at Wesley Willows Nursing Home – which turned out to be quite lovely, we had a wonderful time!

Our table featured the Scott, Berryman, and Hayes couples. It was probably just an oversight to seat all the good looking people together. (Smile). Still, we managed to muddle though together!

The whole evening was planned exceptionally well. The room was resplendent in red and white with hand-poured chocolate roses and fresh flower arrangement (which I also found out later were each hand-arranged!). We enjoyed a delicious salad, dinner, and dessert – chocolate raspberry cheesecake – oh. my. yum!

During dinner, each table worked to solve a murder mystery based (loosely) on actual people in the church. It involved some detecting and (hating to boast as I do) I was one of the people who made the discovery of the right fictional “culprit.”

After the mystery was solved, Pastor gave a (struggling with what word to put here, I guess this one works best) convicting challenge on godly marriage.

He had us all laughing when he pointed out that we were saving $50 on a guest speaker. “I’ve been away so long; you can consider me a guest speaker. But you don’t have to pay me an honorarium.”

At that point, Heidi leaned over to me and said, “Sounds like a good gig. I could use $50, maybe I should be a guest speaker?” We laughed together.

Pastor talked about two marriage “impossibilities.” For women, to respect their husbands. Impossible, he pointed out, since men are hard to have any respect for. For men, to always be infatuated with their wives. Impossible, since men are always tempted by the lust of the flesh.

He discussed how we should strive toward achieving these two impossibilities. He also said something profound, at least to me. He pointed out that just because we are married to someone doesn’t mean that we stop treating them like a brother (or sister) in Christ. We are still responsible to treat them with the same love, respect, and admonition as we would any John or Jane Doe Christian.

I hadn’t really thought about that before, and it gave me pause to think. Overall, the challenge was convicting, and I found myself being grateful that we didn’t have a guest speaker for the event.

Afterwards, we were able to talk with several couples and enjoy just being with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

It was a nice evening. Even if someone (thankfully, fictional) had to die!

Sometimes, I think about being on the committee to plan parties and events like this, but then I remember my “curse” of trying to plan parties. If I did it, someone probably would end up dead, purely by accident, of course.

I think I’ll just stick to enjoying the parties, instead.