I go where I find life

Every night I gather with my roommates around the dining room table to share with each other our highs and lows from the day and the ways that we saw God working in our lives over the course of the hours. It is longer conversation amongst the four of us, rarely shorter than a half hour and often times winding long into the night with conversation and prayer for one another.

Every Monday I pick up four junior-high girls for a small group with Young Life we call Campaigners. Traveling anywhere with junior high students is an adventure. Seatbelts must be checked by the minute, as you never know who has wiggled out of theirs. The windows must be locked, the stereo closely monitored, and the giggling tends to be incessant. They fill me in on the gossip since I saw them last, a mere hours earlier at their school lunch. There are no highs and lows, just dramatic details of the halls at their junior high.

Every Sunday I gather with a circle of ten first- and second-graders on the church floor to share with each other our highs and lows of the week. It is a rapid conversation, some too shy to say anything, others interrupting every chance they get, and a constant battle to get most of them to sit still. Highs range from anything to having a loose tooth to going to a birthday party while lows focus more on not having a loose tooth or losing a soccer game.

They are each different, obviously, though one could argue that first- and second-graders are strikingly similar to junior-high students. However they all remain examples of the community that we have been called into as followers of the Lord. Communities in which sometimes we share, sometimes we listen, and often times we do nothing but to pray. It is these communities that the Lord calls us into in Acts 2:42-47 where it is written,

"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."

Faith. Living faith is not meant to be lived alone. God uses community and fellowship to challenge and to grow us, whether wrestling through tough questions with a 13-year-old or answering the curious heart of a six-year-old. God uses the same community to hold us accountable, such as the answering I do to Him by way of the expectations agreed upon with my roommates. They ask hard questions of my life and walk, and I do the same, and again, we grow with one another. God uses community to draw us to Him through word and prayer. God uses community to bring us joy and bless us, as he did his followers years ago. God uses community to bring us life.

I gathered in a tight circle with those junior-high girls last week, their giggling calmed to a quiet whisper as they shared the wanderings of their hearts. The question on the table was what community meant to them. They were silent for awhile before Megan spoke. "Community is like life to me. Like when I am here I feel alive. I feel like when I laugh it is real. And when we talk, like someone is really listening. And like when we leave, that even if we aren't together all the time, that we kind of are, that God is with us, and in that way we are still with each other."

Community, it's a lot like life, the way it was intended to be.

I just go where the life is. I go where I feel the Holy Spirit sweeping over me; where I hear the whispers of truth, the answers to questions, the laughter that is deep, where the air is raw, and the tears even more real. If it is on the deck with my roommates late at night, under billions of stars, which only begin to suggest the mystery of our God. Or if it is under the bright lights, noise, and silliness of a room full of six-year olds; I just go where I find life.