A Call to "We"

I'm not giften in many areas.  But the places of gifting, I know and own.  It has taken me so very long to not chase after what I've seen others do before me, to go with 'known' areas of ministry, of service, of worship.  I was a children's pastor all through college.  Todd and I ran the Littlest Hearts program for 2-5 year olds in South Africa through two pregnancies and three babies.  I have been on leadership for children's camps, youth ministry, VBS, mission trips and more.  I'm more than capable of putting together a seriously great program, Biblically based and with grit for the kids to remember for years to come.  I can do those things, but it's not my gifting, it's not the thing that I do because I find a worship melody within the work.  Someone once said they do the work they do because it "makes my heart sing."

My heart sings, worships, when I'm calling people into sanctuary.  Ever since I came across the concept in the Jewish faith that each individual home is a temple, a sacred space set apart (after the fall of the actual sanctuary in the Temple), I fell in love.  That's what I want do.  I want to make my home, my space, my sphere of influence into a holy space, a vulnerable and sanctified space where sins are sacrificed to make room for the beauty of the Creator.

I have a friend, and for the life of me, I cannot remember a time in our friendship that wasn't messy.  We were among the few in a small, private Christian college in the heart of the midwest who came from "less than perfect" backgrounds.  There was a bond before a friendship, an understanding that we, we know how to muck through it.  When I look back on our tenure as friends, I see how we have come from hardship to hardship over the years, and one of the reasons why she is such a dear friend is because she has very quietly let me be in my muck.  Not fix it, not start throwing things at me in order to "help" get me out, she's let me be right where I am.  As she put it last week, "this is a holy friendship."

I often wonder why so few other relationships are that connected, that special, that holy.  There are certainly people I see more often, connect with far more frequently.  And then I realize the sheer amount of vulnerability and exposed fears we've shared.  Being real is always beautiful work, but it's never easy work.  I was listening to a sermon by my favorite pastor.  My absolute favorite preacher. (Side note:  When I die, Todd knows to have a bonfire, good food, bagpipe music and at least snippets if not full sermons of Pastor Scott.)  In the sermon, Pastor Scott called out the times when we use the term "we" but really the meaning is for someone else to be the "we".  The example he used was the moment when his wife would say, "we should put away the fall decorations" when really she meant for Pastor Scott and their son to pack the boxes up to the attic.

I feel the "we" in my marrow, the real WE, not the one that calls on others.  I yearn for there to be a call from my life to the world that says, COME BE PART OF THIS WE!  Because community is ingrained on my soul, etched into my very bones.  I want to remind people that WE are a people called to love, WE are called to remember that Christ came as a baby not as a weapon of mass destruction (both actual options by the way... think about it).  I have lost countless hours of sleep because of the state of this world, but more specifically, the state of so many who sit in pews in churches all over this country and mull over gun control and presidential candidates and how glad they'll be when our borders will finally be "closed".  Every fiber of my being cries and weeps because WE are called to be a people who are vulnerable, willing to give not just our coat but our shirt as well to those in need.  WE are called to be a people who fully know and recognize that it is within each and every one of us to turn from the Truth WE know.  That WE all need to daily, if not hourly, remember to "Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee."  Because fear is powerful, and the more fearful we are, the more individually we forget who WE really are.  And I want so deeply to remind people who WE are...

Because it's been years since I have felt real and honest community.

Because it's been so very long since my heart could gather around and say, "You are my people. This is my WE."

And I was made to be in a WE.  I was built, as a living stone (James), to participate in the loving action of building the holy temple into this world, not just storing up and protecting here on Earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal (Matthew).

The Greek word for wander, as in stray or walk away, is the same word that gave the planets their name, because when the heavenly bodies were being named, they seemed to wander, with no real connect to each other, totally detached.  I want to propose to the forces big and small from this little hidden dark alley of the world wide web that no matter how much we each think we are our own people, our own unique individuals, that none of us are not detached, independent, unconnected.  Each action we individually have has a reaction on what WE ARE.

My bones call out for community.  My blood demands to be reconnected to the bloodlines from which I came.  I am an adopted daughter, heir to the Kingdom, seeking where I come from.  Would someone, please for the love of God, come and tell me about my people?  Would someone, please for the love of Mercy, share with and in me about our family?  Would someone, please for the love of Peace, come and listen to the stories of the One who called each and every single person, who bears the image of Yahweh, Beloved???