This morning I got to church and discovered that most of my Sunday school class was sitting together. I think this was all accidental and organic but I really needed it. I'm a single person and I don't have any family at the church I attend in Tallahassee. Worshipping in Tallahassee is a very different experience then what I wrote about last week where this one place feels like my whole past. At the church I attend in Tallahassee I often sit by myself. I sit near or around the same place every week and people always ask me the vague question of how I'm doing and often they ask if I'll graduate soon (no, I won't).
But this morning I had a place to sit. A place that I made my own with a group of people who, even though I'm not close with them, made me feel as close to belonging as possible. They knew my name and visited with me.
It meant so much to me that I actually went back tonight for evening worship services, or what I call 'round two.' I hadn't been to evening services in ages. For months I'd been going to small group Bible study but that's on hiatus for the summer. Before that I went to Sunday night yoga classes which I believed were as edifying as evening service (they were then, but I don't think I'd find them that way now). The evening service was 90% singing and I really needed that. I told the minister, half-jokingly, that if every evening service was singing I would never, ever miss.
I've been praying a lot lately for a more personal relationship with God and been asking a lot if God actually knew me, if he knew what I was doing and if he thought about me. If he cared in the very intimate details of my life, not just the love and the salvation and the heaven, which are all grace-filled gifts, but I wanted to know if he actually knew what I was doing on any given day. And what's more, I wanted to know if it mattered to him, if I mattered to him a daily basis.
Today I felt like some parts of those questions were answered. In the yoga studio there is a quote about how the spring bud blooms in stages, how it unfolds in its exact moment and not a moment before. And it doesn't just burst open, it opens with purpose and timing. Today I felt like some of my own petals were being opened, even if it was just a little bit.
I'm grateful for that.
2 comments:
I could write a book about the significance of seating and worship. It should not matter but it does. In short, I too struggled with being alone in the crowd at first in Tallahassee. After a while and trying a few different things I realized that I had to try just as hard at making new church friends as I did with the other areas of my life. It helped tremendously!
The singing night sounds awesome. At my home church they do that once a month on the last Wednesday.
sometimes you can feel out of place or alone at a church even when you have a significant other to sit by (though that makes it more bearable, I'm sure).
I just wanted to say that I really like the direction your blog is going. I think making an effort to find the good in the mundane, daily life is very fulfilling. We all go through periods where our lives feel like drudgery, but when we make the effort to find the good -- no matter how small -- we find our lives becoming richer.
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