community in-deed!

forewarning: i sincerely apologize for any frustration you have at my scatterbrainedness today.  this post was kind of a glorified brain-emptying, so have fun trying to follow it.  :)

EBS!!!!!! again! have you ever had a temper tantrum out of happyexcitedjoymindblownness before?  i did when I got home from church today.  it was kind of fun.  :)  there are at least six different reasons for my type 1-2 EBS this morning.  including (but not limited to) awesome intense worship music, awesome intense non-worship music, awesome (well, i guess it wasn't all that intense, but i was already affected, so...) fellowship, awesome intense sermon...

ok. whew.  this is a little weird for me, so bear with me.  ("really quiet girl"  ...pssh, gimme a break).  anyway, that's only a small part of why i wanted to write, yet it's also kind of the main point (oooh... paradox).

"so, what exactly is the point already???"

shhh!!! i'm getting to it.  but first let me explain my morning, so that you can kind of know where i'm coming from (more or less).  unless you were with me this morning and you already know all this.  then i suppose you can skip ahead if you really want.

so when i got to church this morning, i was already excited up to my stomach. (btw, i sometimes measure my emotions as if my body were a measuring receptacle of some sort... emotional up to my stomach, up to my eyes, exploding out of my head, that sort of thing ...feeling it physically).

"you were saying..."

all right! sheesh.  so i was already excited up to my stomach because i knew that the worship set was really awesome and intense and fun.  and also i had made a decision earlier in the week (after a rather heated internal debate over ethics that needed God's mediation--He didn't really seem to have a problem with my reasoning, so i went with it) to sit and listen to music from experienced frientors during first service instead of going to youth group this time.  hehehehehe... so worth it!  i was already energized from the worship, and then the music that i was shown just melted me.  it was almost painful (in a great way, mind you).  then when I sat through second service, he was talking about church community, which is like my favorite thing ever, especially since it summed up my entire morning.  and i was excited up to my eyeballs.

this, friend, is my point.

"well that sounds just dandy and fantastic (whatever...).  great for you, whatever the heck you're so excited about.  but what does any of that have to do with anything?  i mean, music and community are two completely different things!"

no, grasshopper.  it isn't.  ;)

ok, but seriously.  some of my most meaningful friendships intertwine music (which sometimes affects me so much as to make me giddily squirmish, like today), and church community in action (security and belonging intense enough to excite anyone, if they have the privilege of experiencing it).  result = mind blown



the phrase "church family" never meant very much to me when i was younger.  i had friends at church, so i supposed that that was what it meant.  but especially at youth group as a freshman in high school (and since then), and even more especially since being on the worship team, Christianity and church have taken on a whole new meaning, because i've been shown them rather than just being told about them.  through relationship.

i get excited even just thinking about some friendships.  especially ones that make me understand God better, so i get even more excited.  because it's so real.

but how can i possibly make people understand what it's like to be among a group of people who will always love you, even on days when you're a complete jerk, who want to be with you, who delight in your very existence, who look out for your best interest, who help you to think for yourself and grow, and who know you (and you them) so deeply that you could share anything?  how can i communicate that complete security and belonging to someone who has never known it?  it's more mind-boggling than the most unsolvable puzzle (quiet, you smart alec) and more intriguing than the cleverest mystery.  no one is naturally that "nice."  i bet that if more people experienced this side of church, doubt would not be nearly as much of a problem.  sheesh! see how much it has affected me, even.

trying to be a Christian without being rooted and invested in a group of believers who act as a family to one another is like trying to find your way to Dorothy's house in Kansas whilst traveling south on a road that you think is going east, without so much as a map or a compass or another person in the shotgun.  i believe that you can be saved by just sincerely accepting Christ.  but if you're all alone in it, it will feel like pulling teeth the whole way, no matter how dedicated you are.  but through Christian community, which was God's design, it brings joy, even when things don't go your way.