Almost everyone in my Life Group was out of town this weekend, so we canceled our meeting tonight. Instead, I joined another Life Group for the evening. After a bit of trouble finding the house (my fault for assuming that the street one block from 33rd would be 32nd!), I arrived just in time to begin.
I was welcomed warmly into the group–that was small that night because several of their members were also gone. It was myself, one of my good friends, our youth pastor and his wife, and another couple that I don’t know very well.
It was wonderful–I love that I belong to a church that opens their lives to one another. Our little “catchphrase” is “Living Life Together”–and that’s truly what occurs. Even though I didn’t “belong” to that group, I still belonged. I was welcomed. I was given the freedom to share, to cry, to pray. We chatted for quite a while afterward, informally. We talked about marathon running and the origins of the band “Black Sabbath” and teased about women always spending forever talking (while the men kept asking each other question after question after question.) After our youth pastor and his wife left, my friend and I could just chat on the couch for a while longer–our hosts didn’t mind.
We got to catch up on life–talk one on one. It seems we don’t get that too often anymore now that I’m not sponsoring at Z-360 with her any more. Now almost all our visiting time is with little siblings or quasi-siblings hanging around. Nothing like how we used to be able to chat while setting up the room for Wednesday night services. So it was nice to just enjoy conversation.
This is just one of the many things I love about my church–I love my own Life Group, but I love that I can drop by any other one and be with people who care for me and will pray for me. I love that I have a family and quasi-family within my church that “hangs out” all the time. I love that I have sisters like my friend who I can be real with. I love that I can share my heart with the body and know that they value and guard my heart.
That’s what the church is–it’s people, living together, together being conformed to the image of Christ. None of us individually can truly reflect the glory of God–but as we all live together in Christ, God begins to reveal Himself to, in, and through us.