I’m deliberately finding joy for forty days. To start from day one click here.
This week Ann Voskamp asks, “What spiritual practice has most deeply affected your relationship with Jesus?”
The answer for me comes in an instant.
I suppose I should picture steeples, pews, something made up of religion or ritual.
But instead I think of this…
Coffee.
Now before you wonder if I’ve lost my mind (or my faith) let me explain a bit.
It’s not really about the coffee.
It’s about the person sitting across from me.
And, even more, about the Person who quietly slips in and joins us.
For where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them. Matthew 18:20
I’ve been thinking lately that perhaps our western world has things a bit backwards.
We tend to think we find God more when we withdraw from everyone else.
And we do sometimes.
As in a marriage, there are moments when you shut the door and share an intimacy that belongs to no one else.
But most of life, most of the relationship, is in-between those times. And if we limit our intimacy with God to just this, it seems incomplete.
Even Jesus seems to have spent more spiritual time engaging with people than alone with God.
What if connection with God comes through connection with others?
I’ve realized it does for me, more than any other way.
I’m an introvert…an off-the-charts introvert, in fact.
But still, still, God meets me most often through the heart and hands of another.
When I am in community (whether with one or many) my faith grows.
The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Galatians 5:6
Sometimes this happens through a literal cup of coffee and a real-life friend across the table. Other times it comes in an e-mail, a comment from one of you, a phone call that stretches to family across the miles.
I’m not sure the how matters as much as the what…the coming together in His name.
He joins us.
We join Him.
And suddenly that coffee is a taste of heaven on earth.
In your presence is fullness of joy. Psalm 16:11
Do other people ever help you feel closer to God? If so, who and how?
