I’d like to challenge the model that assumes that church always offers us a product. What if sometimes church simply helps us center ourselves in the place—in the Person—where our center should be? If we are to build our lives around God, if our faith is to permeate our entire lives, then we need a model that’s not only passive. We respond to God’s love by loving God. Part of that love is taking time, consciously, to re-focus ourselves on God—by going to church, by spending time praying and thinking about our faith with other believers.

There are other reasons to spend time in church, but I’ll offer you one other for now: we are each other’s companions on this journey through life. We offer each other support and insight (and sometimes challenges, too) as we go. That Sunday where you maybe didn’t feel moved—someone else probably was. And that someone else was supported on that journey by the presence of other believers, people who also know and acknowledge that we are beloved by God, both individually and collectively. As a church, whether or not at any given moment we feel like we’re “getting something out of it,” we know and love and support each other. That is itself a gift in our time together.

I give thanks for you, my church, for going on this journey with each other and with me, for returning weekly to center ourselves in God, and for mutually knowing and loving and supporting each other in our lives—as I hope I do for you.

I’ll see you Sunday!

Becky

Prayer

Radiant Morning Star,

You are both guidance and mystery.

Visit our rest with disturbing dreams.

And our journeys with strange companions.

Grace us with the hospitality

To open our hearts and homes

To visitors filled with unfamiliar wisdom

Bearing profound and unusual gifts