​106. The Holding of Hands

Every other Thursday, I meet with two really close friends. We talk and pray together and discuss a current book we’re reading by Charlotte Mason. We get out the things inside us that have built up over several days and the most important part of all: we listen.

Church is this.

Church is also the Bible study my husband and I teach with our friends, people we’ve known since we started attending there. It’s sharing parenting woes and triumphs and work headaches and the heartbreak that comes with the crux of living. And the holding of hands as we walk into another week, a sea of unbelievers built to break us down whether they know it or not.

Church is also our Sunday gathering, the breaking of bread and taking communion, the soft pause in the ceremony to remember what we’re really here for: a broken body and spilt blood for the weight of our sin.

Church is real. It’s the people not the pomp. It’s the prayer, not the circumstance. It is an undying love for our brothers and sisters in Christ, not a tongue-wagging, side-eye endeavor that leaves a new member out on the fringes.

It’s an arms wide open welcoming of the new, the scared, the “I don’t have this figured out yet” because the thing is, we don’t either.

But He does.

And that’s always the point.