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Today I want to talk with you about a very important part of what we do in our worship services. I've talked about lighting the chalice, listening to music, having an offertory, but this month I have been thinking about why we share our joys and sorrows with each other. In case you are new here, that's the part of the service where people stand up or speak from their seats and share something important that's happening in their lives - like if it's their birthday, or someone they love is having a baby, or is in the hospital, and so on. Rev. Don lights a candle for the joy or sorrow that's been shared.

Now, I knew that Rev. Don's sermon today was going to be about Albert Einstein, a very famous scientist, so I thought about scientists and some things that they have noticed about the world. One thing they have noticed - and most of you have probably noticed this, too - is that if you drop a stone in a body of water, it makes concentric circles, ripples going out and out and out from where you let the stone go. And if you drop two stones, one after the other, the circles pass through each other, like this. Would anyone like to come up closer to see this for themselves? You can try it if you'd like to.

Scientists have realized that the whole world is kind of like this bowl of water and the stones. What happens in one place, or at one time, intersects with what happens elsewhere, or at another time. When we drop two stones into the water, the ripples each one makes touches the ripples of the other one. And that means that the two stones are in a way connected with each other, even though they never touch directly.

And that's what happens when we share our joys and sorrows, as well. When someone shares something funny, we are touched and we laugh. When someone shares something sad or frightening, we are touched and feel sad with them. And that's why we have a time to share things like this - so that we will know that we are connected with each other, just like stones in a pool of water.

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