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Message from Pastor Marty

Puffs Plus

By Pastor Peter Marty

Cedarburg, Wisconsin, is a small historic mill town, located on Cedar Creek, just a short drive north of Milwaukee. A national survey of 8,500 small towns in America ranks Cedarburg the 34th most attractive and quaint. A quick visit, and you’ll understand why. This is the kind of town that hangs flower baskets from every light pole. Small specialty shops and charming eateries line a perfectly manicured Washington Avenue. You can stay in a bed-and-breakfast that dates back to the stagecoach era.

Tucked between the shops and restaurants are churches. Plenty of them. My wife Susan and I stepped into Advent Lutheran Church (ELCA) while visiting Cedarburg on a recent Saturday. The weather was gorgeous and the front door of the church was propped open. Why not enter? We couldn’t find any people inside. A few lights were on. So we poked around.

The commitments of this small congregation seem as wide open as its doors were that sunny morning. We could tell as much from the table of mission opportunities, covered as it was with literature and photos highlighting this and that effort. There is a fair trade coffee campaign going on, and food pantry giving. There are Habitat builds and nursing home visitors. The people at Advent Lutheran must really pull together. That was our quick assessment. Funny how you can detect a congregational spirit just from walking into an unoccupied building.

We stepped into the sanctuary, a perfectly restored space surrounded by colorful glass. We checked out a curious sculpture near the pulpit, and a suspended Advent wreath that must stay up all year long. I started singing softly, just to check out the acoustical properties of this empty space. It felt holy. Oh, that I had a thousand voices, to praise my God with thousand tongues… My wife didn’t exactly chime in. A gorgeously crafted organ sat behind the altar, stretching up just inches from the ceiling. The whole space was warm, intimate, and obviously well cared for.

The pews were ordinary church pews, except for one addition. Every pew had a box of Puffs™ facial tissues. I am not kidding. Every pew. Pews two and three even had two boxes each. These weren’t little tiny stick-in-your-glove compartment cardboard dispensers. These were the full-size deal. Cedarburg Lutherans don’t mess around with Puffs Basic™ or Puffs Ultra™. No, they go for it all. These were Puffs PLUS™ tissues, complete with soothing moisturizers like aloe, Vitamin E, and chamomile.

What on earth are all these tissue boxes for? This is my guess: They are to blot the tears that come from really powerful worship. The closer you get to the front (like rows two and three), the more intense it gets. That has to be it. You know what it’s like when a pipe organ chills your spine, or a trumpeter reminds you of angels, or a sermon evokes a memory that was buried long ago. When the presence of the Lord gets very vivid, the tear ducts in our eyes start to open up. I see watery eyes in church all the time, my own included. Both joy and sadness can open the floodgates. And do you know what? The people at Advent Lutheran in Cedarburg are ready.

By the time we left, “Dave” had appeared. He was a friendly church volunteer, spackling some wall in the restroom that morning. We chatted near the ushers’ desk close to the exit doors. I glanced down at some small plastic packets of tissue in a basket. They were Puffs-To-Go™ — tissues people evidently grab as they head out the door. Just think of worship that is passionate enough to require a tissue for the tears … or faithful enough to equip people for the tears of a hurting world outside. Wow!

Pastor Peter W. Marty,

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