Grace and Truth column

No one expected me to get back in time for our worship service. But I left the Mennonite Church USA convention in Columbus, Ohio, early enough Sunday morning to arrive in Chapel Hill, N.C., a few minutes after our 5 p.m. service began. I slipped into the sanctuary and found an inconspicuous seat in a back pew next to Eric, Rebecca and their 6-month-old baby, Grace.

God feels different from the back pew. I experienced a lot more wiggly and noisy life. Some parents sit in the back few rows so they can get up and walk around with their babies. I heard Grace squeak with joy at the most ordinary parts of the service. And I saw her chubby legs and arms stretch and swing this way and that. The Holy Spirit must have enlivened her little body. Grace seemed to dance in the arms of her mother and father—and in the middle of our worship service. And I wanted to dance, too. I remembered one of the convention’s worship services, at which I’d scribbled a few lines from pastor Megan Ramer’s meditation: “The Holy Spirit longs for my companionship,” she said. “This Spirit waits with us and for us, drawing us again and again.” That’s exactly how I felt when I watched Grace. I saw the invitation of the Spirit to enjoy God’s presence; I felt the longing of God drawing me again and again into companionship. Grace’s ecstatic little body showed me that worship is where, as Ramer said, “I am being sought by a Spirit who longs for me.” And when the Spirit flows through us, we “create a home with the Spirit, we make a dwelling place together.” The Spirit draws us into worship where we find our home with God. As I watched Grace I could feel myself resting into my home after a weeklong trip full of busy meetings. These people are my home; they are how the Spirit offers me companionship with God. Worship that evening choreographed our bodies into a dance with the Holy Spirit. We were like Grace’s wiggly, noisy little body. We sat and stood, sang and prayed, listened and talked, and all that movement was how the Spirit drew us into companionship. Mary Jo led us in hymns that blended our voices. Laura’s prayer opened our minds to God as we let our thoughts flow through one another. And Dave’s sermon broke into my tired heart and invited me to share in his weaknesses with tears; my vision turned misty when his voice cracked and trembled. We were companions. My whole week at the convention came together on my drive home from church that evening. Maybe it had to do with how exhausted I was, or with finally having time alone to process the week of joy and sadness and possibility. In a moment everything converged, and I found myself with blurry eyes. But this was par for the course during my week in Columbus. When a friend asked me about my church, the best I came up with was to say that my people are ordinary yet infinitely interesting. And I had to stop talking because I noticed my eyes began to water. Love is strange. Pastor Ramer is right: The Spirit draws us again and again into companionship. God’s grace is an invitation to get mixed up with a bunch of ordinary people and realize you love them—and to come to know this love as what God feels like. To borrow from Sebastian Moore’s God Is a New Language, I always look forward to coming home when all the mysteries of God are revealed in the clasp of my sister and brother’s hands. And all this is the gospel—to feel my way into God, welcome Christ’s companionship into loneliness and let the Spirit overwhelm me with the goodness of eternal life.