church | Song Dog Journal

Sunday is my favorite day of the week. Hands down, it is my favorite day. What better way to spend a day than in fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ as we revel in our relationship with God and in the joy of companionship with His followers? What a privilege!

As we got closer to the moving date last year and early this year, I feared that we’d move out here into the middle of our 800 family acres and suddenly be lost from fellowship and friendship. What a petty and faithless fear! I read a quote recently that said “Worry is the worship of circumstance.” How profound. For a Christian to give in to worry is for a Christian to momentarily believe that a circumstance is stronger than God Himself. What a pathetic witness and a waste and misuse of energy. But worry I did. Yet God was gracious, and as I learned to trust Him more, He has provided against that fear in so many ways.

He has provided us with a wonderful church home, a welcoming body of Believers who are a living example of the sweetness of the Saints, and He has provided us with friends with whom my sisters and I can share meaningful friendships. Leaving Illinois and the friendships we’d developed over the years was hard–It is hard to leave friends behind, friends who have invested in your life and whose life you have invested in. Separation hurts. But God knows. He knows and He provides.

In church for the past few months, we’ve been studying through the Olivet Discourse, the last group of teachings of Christ before His crucifixion. The passage we studied today was Matthew 25: 31-46, in which Jesus talks about love among Believers, ministering to the “least of these”, and we talked about what genuine love looks like. Genuine love for one another is a direct result, a fruit, of our love for Jesus Christ. Then, as our love for Jesus grows, our love for the Saints will also grow. And as our love for the Saints and our love for Christ grows, we become easier to love. A dynamic, thriving church is a church where love for Christ is causing radical, otherwordly love for one another, a love that spans class differences, racial differences, cultural differences, temperament, personality, interests, education…A love that defies everything that “pop culture” calls love. What a life-changing, culture-changing, overwhelming thought. We get to experience here a little piece of Heaven, a glimpse, a mere glimpse of what perfect fellowship will look like on the other side of death.

All that is to say, God has provided wonderfully for us in our new life here in the Black Hills. I wish I could personally share some of these adventures and experiences with friends back in Illinois–You are missed, and greatly. But I am in awe (why should I be surprised when an awesome God does wonderful things?) of how He has provided. Today after church, a bunch of us were going to go hiking. It ended up just being me and Sarah, and two of our friends, Hannah and Jacob, but we enjoyed a wonderful afternoon in God’s creation, a hike up to Lover’s Leap, and a lovely view of the Black Hills. We reveled in a fellowship that only our mutual love of Christ could make as sweet as it is. What a sweet, sweet fellowship. What a great, great God.

We tend to be a family of procrastinators. I do have my suspicions that it is a genetic trait. For that reason, Sunday mornings tend to be a little bit hectic–That is, until we walk through the church door and realize we aren’t late.

Well, this morning the unthinkable happened. None of us woke up until 7:40, which is a mere 40 minutes until the absolute latest time we could leave for church and still arrive on time. Our usual Sunday wake-up time of 7:00 rarely seems sufficient, so this was quite the hardship. Sarah the Optimist thought/knew we could all be ready in time, but some of us (Pessimists or Realists, depending on your own person level of Pessimism or Optimism) looked at the ratio of people to showers/mirrors/sinks and thought it was impossible.

Proving that nothing is impossible with God, the next 40 minutes flew by in a blur, and we were all out in the car and driving away on time. I think all of us were a little amazed at this feat of greatness–Five people, one bathroom, and all had coffee AND breakfast, and we were still managing to get to church on time.

Until…

I was sitting in the back seat of the van, concentrating on my mug of cream–Ah, I mean coffee and cream.

“Laura, did you unplug the coffee pot?”

I hadn’t. After which ensued a lengthy conversation about whether to risk it and go to church anyway, or turn around and make sure our house wouldn’t burn down.

The long and the short of it is that we had our own church service at home–We read and discussed an article, read a commentary about the early Christian church (which, pertinently, was composed of individual house churches), and listened to a podcast. We’re not perfect–But God in His grace can redeem our flaws and mistakes and work with them anyway to bring glory to Himself.

But next time we’ll make sure to unplug the coffee pot.