Saturday, May 31, 2014

It Happens

I saw God today, unexpectedly. My friend said he wasn’t sure who would show up. Well, over a dozen friends did. They are extraordinarily ordinary people who showed up and brought their spouses, kids and God along with them. We laughed and loaded the moving truck to the brim with boxes, furniture, toys and odds and ends. Then we shared pizza, prayers, tears and hugs to carry our beloved family (friends) a little further up the road.

God appeared again, unexpectedly. When that same truck pulled up in front of the new house there was an even larger group of extraordinarily ordinary people waiting. They are seminary students who showed up and brought their spouses, children and God along to meet us. Everyone helped in one way or another. The children stood in line at the back of the truck to carry what they could and the entire job was done in no time flat. It was joyful and miraculous. It was “God-all-up-in-there-amongst-us”. One seminarian was heard to say, “It’s just what we do”.


In a word, “it” is community. Community is not just a word. It is not just the hottest hipster way of doing churchy stuff. Community is people showing up and sharing their hearts, lives and love whenever and wherever. Community happens when extraordinarily ordinary people “do” community. It crosses every boundary and breaks down every barrier we create to contain it. It is where God shows up. It is real. I saw it happen.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Learning all the time....

I intended to grab a quick breakfast with a friend before work. It’s something that I rarely give a second thought. But on that particular morning my typical, distracted, fog of “busyness” was disrupted when my friend offered a prayer before we ate.

His words were not remarkable. That’s not what got my attention. It was the simplicity and fierce sincerity of his words, as profoundly holy as any I have ever heard spoken in a Church. His intimate knowledge of poverty had taught him that “our daily bread” was truly a gift. Through his gratitude and thankfulness for that ordinary bacon-egg-and-biscuit breakfast he shared that sacred knowledge with me.

Jesus once told a group of wealthy party guests: “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind” (Luke 14). I don’t believe his goal was to move the poor into more exclusive social circles. The aim was to save those affluent guests from their spiritual poverty. It was an attempt to break through the camouflage of polite convention and reorient them toward God’s new reality (kingdom).


I like to think I am different but that isn’t true. Although I'm not as influential and well connected as those first century party animals, I can be just as oblivious. But I am learning. I am learning that any significant amount of time spent among people who struggle against poverty and hunger changes your perspective on reality. It also radically changes your experience of God. I wonder what our experience of God would be like if we took half of our meals at a table with God’s poor?