what have we lost?

"So do you go to church? I mean that is what you are supposed to do right?" was the question posed to me. And the thought that began to form in my mind looked like this: what does it really mean for the people of God to 'come'? Especially 'come together'? and why? Is it a gathering where we sit and listen? is that it?
Could it be that how we do this 'coming' thing is actually a read out, if you will, of the condition of our hearts?

What does it look like for you/my heart to 'come'? Who do people see when you 'arrive'?

If we come together right, we come fully and nakedly ourselves...we come with more of our humanness showing than we are apt to come to most places.

We come like Moses with the evidence of being a shepherd on our shoes, with muck on our shoes - tired, sore feet, travel stained with the dust of our lives upon us: our failures, our deceits, our hypocrisies...because if, unlike Moses, we have never killed anyone, we have again and again withheld the gift of humanity from other people. Including with-holding from those who are 'nearest' to us, the love that might have made their lives worth living...not to mention our own.

Like Moses, shouldn't we come as we are? Maybe even as strangers and exiles...because wherever it is that we truly belong, whatever is that is truly home for us, we know in our hearts that we have somehow lost it and/or gotten lost. Something is missing from our lives that we cannot even name - something we know best from the empty place inside of us all where it belongs. Some times we just know it as the ache.

And too many of us spend our time avoiding that terrible feeling of emptiness/darkness and we spend our time searching for something that reminds us of what it felt like...and in the end life becomes about us...which is a very sad and twisted reality. Just living for ourselves...

Could 'running from something' or 'searching for something' be synonyms?

Is love not the transformation of a life...from being all about me, to being all about you?

I think we come together to find what we have lost. We come together to acknowledge that even if we are the best we can be...we are lost and helpless to save ourselves. That we need the reality of Jesus...not just in a supernatural personal/private experience...but His reality manifesting in others.

We need the gift of being able to confess our sins to someone with muck on their shoes too.

Could it be that what we search for is a place of love and no fear...where we can rest and allow the journey to be what it is? The pathway of being found...

so back to the beginning...Could it be that how we do this 'coming' thing is actually a read out, if you will, of the condition of our hearts?

Is my ability to invite others into my very personal journey a barometer of my selfishness? of my love? What if in the coming we discovered what it meant to return to that which we truly long for...a place called home.

just thoughts
j