This is our annual Shrove Tuesday Jazz Mass, a celebration before the somber and introspective Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.  Maggie Jarrell, our Pastor with Children and Families, delivers the Communion Meditation, based on Zechariah 8:1-8.  She began by recounting an experience with water balloons and a three-year-old boy in last year’s Vacation Bible School.  When his balloon burst before he could play with it, water everywhere, rather than crying he was delighted.  The passage from Zechariah illustrates God’s wish for people in a restored Jerusalem where play and delight are rampant.  Play is, of course, for children, but play is for everyone.  Maggie gives examples from Fred Rogers, Albert Einstein, and from research that play is essential.  She also cites the words of Jesus who calls people to become as children in order to enter the kingdom.  But we are in an era when productivity is valued, and play is considered to be wasteful.  But God says our worthiness is based on our very being, not on our productivity.