gathering

When two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure I’ll be there.

I’m in the air on my way to Albuquerque where I’ll get a car and drive up to Santa Fe and to Glorieta for a gathering of like-minded Christian wierdos like me. At least that’s why I’m going – I’m expecting to be able to converse with other believers without having someone look at me like I’ve lost my last marble.
All morning I’ve been thinking of Jesus’ promise that when we gather in his name he will be in our midst. Last year after I took Jack to the Rush concert in Atlanta, I blogged about the intense feeling of unity and community among the concert goers. There were thousands of people there from all walks of life, backgrounds, cultural contexts, but everyone was there for the same reason. I lamented that you gather a couple hundred people at church and possibly find fifty different reasons for the gathering. Because we do not gather to worship and seek God, community rarely results.
I’ve gathered many times to seek God with a small group of single-purpose, like-minded friends and felt the intensity of the Spirit in our midst. The resulting bond and community in the group is one that can’t be attained in any other way. We can make music and play foosball together and become good friends, but we will never experience community like that fostered in the seeking of the Spirit.
On a particular night, we gathered on a patio outside Borders bookstore in Charlotte with tons of weighty, scary, dimly lit questions and wispy hearts. We spoke into the lives of one another and found ourselves honored with the presence of an extra friend. When we realized that we’d probably ought to head back toward Columbia, we thought about praying, but it was as if that would have been a sort of slap in the face to one who had been sitting among us, listening and translating, speaking to and through us all evening long. We realized that we’d been praying so we breathed an amen and drove home.
I’ve been anticipating this trip with such expectations. Can you imagine 150 people gathered for a single purpose? Worship, guidance, community. I’m preparing for an intensity of shekinah that I’ve never experienced before. For this I am praying.