(Please be aware that during the season of Lent, these weekly devotions will be arriving in your inbox on Tuesdays.)
Chaos … it looked like human chaos. People all over the place … clots of three, four and seven people …different topics circulating in each group … loud laughter … all fueled by Anne’s cookies and coffee bar coffee. It was different than almost every other week, because people who normally gather in three different worshiping communities, we all together in the same place … the narthex. Our Town Hall Meeting ended 25 minutes early and everyone had time to kill. So chaos ensued, with people talking with folks they almost never get to see on a Sunday morning.
It … was … amazing. A holy mosh pit … a Jesus flash mob. I don’t know when the narthex has been louder. As I walked through the crowd I couldn’t keep track of any conversations, because they were all in high gear at the same time. It made me consider having Town Hall meeting every couple of months, simply so that we could do this more often. It was wonderful.
And I found myself wondering if this was one of those moments when the membrane between this world and the next one is especially thin. The narthex resonated with such vibrancy, such energy, such joy … that it was overwhelming. I found myself thinking of the Kingdom of God. When Jesus talks about it, it is “over the top” … it is “more than you can imagine” … it is “heaven on earth.” We weren’t in heaven, obviously. But maybe what we were experiencing was a “foretaste of the feast to come” as our communion liturgy describes it. Yup … I’m going with that.
So, in your prayer life this week, pray for additional in-breakings of the Kingdom of God. I am convinced that they are all around you … they are all around me. I simply spend most of my time either ignoring them, or convincing myself that they aren’t real. Why not try trusting God to lead you into these sacred spaces and onto this holy ground\? Amen.
