Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Simple churching is incredible. Spending an entire Sunday as a Sabbath is the most amazing experience. Rest. Worship. Food. Scripture. Conversation. Prayer. Recreation. (Did I mention food?)

Until you have spent 12 hours on Sunday with people from your church, unhurriedly going about the business of simply being together, for many weeks in a row, you can’t grasp the peaceful joy that is simple church.

We don’t get stressed by the approach of Sunday morning anymore. This is a big deal. Sundays used to be a constant source of bickering and rushing and hurryhurryhurry and “Whew, it’s over.”. Sundays are now a source of joy, and rest and “Aw, do we have to go home?”.

I’ve gleaned more from scripture in the months of simple church than I have in years. I’m seeing the book of John as a whole rather than being split into little chunks by the necessities of sermon topics. Christ is coming alive through the word.

MrMike and MrsVal lived on a few acres just outside of town. He had a long-held dream to build a log home, and they had purchased a large property about an hour away. This year was the year that they were going to move out to the property and live in a small cabin while the house was built.

This was causing a little bit of panic on our part, but heck, only an hour away? We can do that. Church won’t really change. Then MrMike announced that they had found a great deal on a fantastic old house on a great piece of property that will allow them to move into a nicer, larger house now and perhaps rebuild an old log farmstead in the back. It was a better deal all around. But it was three and a half hours away.

God seems to have hit the pause button on our church.

We had been getting used to the one-hour-away move for a few months and we were dealing with it fine, but in the course of 4 days their house sold, the hour-away property sold, and they closed on the far-away deal.

So now what, God? You told us clearly that this was what we were supposed to be doing. This has been the most upbuilding time of my entire life. Now what?

Well, surprisingly enough if you know me at all, I didn’t stress. I wondered what would happen, but I was rather lackadaisically saying “We’ll wait. I’m not going to struggle and stress and try to figure out a plan when this whole thing is way beyond anything we would have planned anyway.”

And we wait. We’ve had church a few weeks now with other families, and a few weeks on our own. I’m not pleased with doing church alone, I know it’s not that healthy longterm.

But we wait. We have the utmost confidence in our God, and we smile and we pray and we wait.