HIGHLIGHTS

Sunday morning rolls around again, and I am contemplating church, a place I feel a need to get back to but with the usual struggle of inertia and dressing of children in time. With a little nudge and a push, I get the motivation to get them up and out in time. This week, I tried a new approach, and decided to take the restless souls of the children to kids choir practice so I could open my whole mind to the sermon. On our way upstairs, I see my beloved friend Michelle, on her way to the service in which I will soon be joining her, and stop to hug my childhood best friend's mother, who is delighted to see the three of us in attendance again, or just in general. I am already feeling so filled with the people in this church, who have come to mean so much to me over not just the course of my spiritual life, but my entire life in general.
After dropping the kids off, I manage to catch up with Michelle and her mother, and we grab coffee and cookies before finding our seats in the Contemporary Service. Vicki mentions she has been running ragged all morning trying to make sure the changes to Sunday School are situated, but she is stopping now for a spiritual break because she really wants to hear Gene's sermon. Gene has recently taken charge of our Bible Study group, and I have come to appreciation of him over the past months I have been getting to know him. My curiosity is piqued about how his sermon is going to be, and he is already leading into the scripture of the day as we walk in to find our seats, reading the story about Jesus overturning tables in the temple, being angry about the way humanity is changing faith into something it should not be.
After he reads the scripture, the focus is on the four teenagers on stage, two boys playing guitar accompanied by two lovely young women singing. I recognize one of the girls, new to the vocals, as Michelle points it out - it is Rich's oldest daughter. I see Rich and his wife to our left, watching her debut and smiling. I am so glad to see them there this day, and see their daughter up on stage, a lovely youthful version of her mother, and a testament to their upbringing.
Gene's sermon was one I could think about for days, in fact probably will, as it hit me on several levels. The title was "Barbarian Christian", and he turned the scripture story of the anger of Jesus at the money changers in the temple into several concepts, one being an idea I have thought about often in the past few years - that as we are called closer to God, the walk becomes more narrow, that Jesus is not a representation of some hippie-peace-love guru but in fact one who stands up for tolerating only that which represents true faith and commitment to God, not complacency and "free Grace" without conditions. Several parts of the sermon made us laugh, Michelle and Vicki and I looking at each other with understanding and appreciation of his humor. He challenged the congregation to stop focusing on the outer layers of the onion, the "little gods" that got in the way of true expression of faith, while saving only the little nub of the middle for God, when God wants the whole onion, all the layers to be about Him. He elaborated on examples of "spiritual warriors", who would not accept status quo but rose up to influence change, specifically Martin Luther and John Wesley (the founder of our particular denomination of Christianity). The entire sermon served as a method of charging people to be fired up inside, to not accept less but expect more, from ourselves as well as others around us, to turn our souls on fire for Christ and what he was standing for, and stand for it ourselves.
After this thought provoking yet amusing sermon, he turned it over to the vocal group again, and invited us to meditate on what was spoken. As the group sang, I was watching Rich and Kerri watch their daughter, and imagining the pride they were feeling, and happy for them that their daughter was growing up to embody the values they worked so hard to teach their children. The entire hour, I had been feeling this general sense that "church=love" in my heart, that these people were the reasons I continued to come here, that every one of them taught me something or served in some role in my life.
As I put my head down and listened to the music, I opened my heart to God and began a conversation with Him of gratitude, of thankfulness, and I found myself thinking of the beginning of my spiritual conversion, something I have had to defend or explain to people from my past who questioned this re-awakening of faith for their own particular reasons. I thought about how I was hit on so many different levels all at the same time, which all served to open my heart, right at the very same time that Rich and Michelle stepped in that open door and offered me a place to go where all those things could find outlet, and how amazing it was that God crafted that opportunity to bring me closer to Him. From there, it all grew outward, to a place in which these people I find here became my "church-family", the people who are always there to support me when I need it, who are my safety net, the people I run to when I need answers, who help me when I need help, who act in all the ways family would. These are the people who became my true family, so that when my real family, my "nuclear" family, split apart like atoms under pressure, I had a place to fall. I had a system of support already in place. I remembered introducing my real family to my church family at one Christmas service, how proud I was to point out all my friends here, and how I had realized how much these people meant to me at that point. I also remembered during the nuclear fission of my real family last year, some anger from my real family that these people here had come to mean more to me than they did. But that's because this was a safe place to fall, a place where the people were always there to lift me back up instead of tear me back down, where when I fell, I was bounced right back up in order to be the person God intended me to be, like a spiritual trampoline.
I was overwhelmed with God's intentions in providing this for me, like he had the foresight to know I was going to have this need for this, not only because of this family split but for other reasons as well, and set things in motion in just the right ways to guide me to the resources I was going to need later on. I turned to Michelle and started to explain to her what I had been thinking. She completely understood, but then took it past my own understanding to the next level.
"Yes, we are here for you, and we do these things for you because God planned it that way. It's because he has intentions for you, and I know this." We look at each other with an awareness of my history, of how I was hiding my light under a bushel in misery, and am just now coming out of it and becoming the person God intended me to be all along. Her belief in me and my purpose has always been clear, though, and has been unwavering.
"You were meant to do something amazing in this lifetime," she says to me intently. Then she turns away and adds the final instructions, with authority.
"So start writing."