Murphy's Law

A few months ago, one of my aging parishioners commented that it was getting harder to follow the service in the BCP even when he was wearing his glasses. He wondered if there were such a thing as a large print BCP. I did some looking around and found that, yes, there is a large print BCP.

We put announcements in the bulletin and asked people to donate some money so that we could order ten of them. Which we did. They aren't perfect. The publisher didn't paginate them the same as the standard BCP (so instead of beginning on page 355, the service begins on page 96). They didn't include all four forms of the Rite Two service. They didn't include all six forms of the Prayers of the People. What they did was to only print "the most commonly used" portions.

Again, not perfect, but better than nothing for those people who aren't able to read the standard BCP.

Yesterday one of my parishioners and our organist started the long process of cleaning out the choir room. Eliminating copies of "contemporary praise music" from 1973, organizing, cleaning, tossing, etc.

And, of course, finding. They found, tucked away in a corner, underneath a pile of old papers, four COMPLETE BOXED SETS of the Hymnal 1982 and the BCP -- large print versions.

There are three boxed sets of the hymnal and one box of the BCP. Complete. Large Print.

Why does this always happen after you've made a purchase??