Sunday morning comes in windy, our very desert sort of announcement that, yes, fall is here.
We settle into rows for music and story, the two groups of fifth grade girls piled together. Too many bodies in too few chairs. But perfectly content to stay that way, because, well, yes.
Because it was windy. Because they are tired. Because the need to be together is stronger that the need to actually have your entire backside safely on a plastic surface.
Because, this. This is courage. Or, this is stubborn. This self aware wildness inside of them. This dig in your heels, find a different way, relentless grit that will make them such a force to be reckoned with.
This is what their brave looks like.
It looks like a thirteen year old who finds me standing in a hallway during the fall frenzy and decides to dub himself the hall monitor's assistant. Weaving through rooms with me to find candy baskets that need to be filled - and learning the art of the candy tax. Reading the class projects that are posted to dozens of different bulletin boards. Running through mazes and putting stacks of chairs and desks back to where they belong. Posting a selfie from my phone and grabbing a friend to play catch with a leftover pumpkin.
It looks like an eighth grader who carves out a space beside me during Sunday morning music, when he wanders back in. Thinks to ask for the definition of a "cornerstone" while we stand there. Sits in the front for the first time since elementary school. Chooses to listen. To think ahead, around, and vaguely connected.
Like girls who gather around to talk about winter camp. About Noah staffs and fabric markers and wads of deodorant. Marshmallow wars and the world's shortest cabin times.
Fifth graders who hop around with me like crazies in the hallway to learn the books of the Bible and repeat the verse a dozen times as we work together to scribble it across a page. Drop a can of food into the donation bin with overdramatic ceremony and fold hearts and pig faces from flat sheets of paper.
Juniors who pop up to move the TV stand out of the way. Do whatever needs to be done. Simply because the youth pastor isn't here, and someone ought to do it. Sit in circles to break apart a John Piper talk. Listen and watch and do their best to buy in. Even when their bodies are tired from Homecoming and their hearts are a little wigged out by this week's differences.
But, always together.
Because the bravest thing that a Gryffindor can do is allow some one else to come alongside. Expose a little of their mess and walk through it in community. Pick up the slack. Let someone else guard your back. Brave.
My Ravenclaws are bravest when they wrestle with ideas and concepts. My Slytherins when they actively work to change their world.
When they are scared, they isolate. They lose their curiosity. They become passive.
Fear makes them the opposite of what they truly are.
And, yes. That means that their defining factors are the very things that require the most fearlessness. But, I think that that is way it works in the Kingdom. Here, in the Holiness of the Presence, peace becomes the plumb line. Courage becomes standard. And, the things that our flesh finds difficult become the new normal.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
This is the One who makes us fearless.
We settle into rows for music and story, the two groups of fifth grade girls piled together. Too many bodies in too few chairs. But perfectly content to stay that way, because, well, yes.
Because it was windy. Because they are tired. Because the need to be together is stronger that the need to actually have your entire backside safely on a plastic surface.
Because, this. This is courage. Or, this is stubborn. This self aware wildness inside of them. This dig in your heels, find a different way, relentless grit that will make them such a force to be reckoned with.
This is what their brave looks like.
It looks like a thirteen year old who finds me standing in a hallway during the fall frenzy and decides to dub himself the hall monitor's assistant. Weaving through rooms with me to find candy baskets that need to be filled - and learning the art of the candy tax. Reading the class projects that are posted to dozens of different bulletin boards. Running through mazes and putting stacks of chairs and desks back to where they belong. Posting a selfie from my phone and grabbing a friend to play catch with a leftover pumpkin.
It looks like an eighth grader who carves out a space beside me during Sunday morning music, when he wanders back in. Thinks to ask for the definition of a "cornerstone" while we stand there. Sits in the front for the first time since elementary school. Chooses to listen. To think ahead, around, and vaguely connected.
Like girls who gather around to talk about winter camp. About Noah staffs and fabric markers and wads of deodorant. Marshmallow wars and the world's shortest cabin times.
Fifth graders who hop around with me like crazies in the hallway to learn the books of the Bible and repeat the verse a dozen times as we work together to scribble it across a page. Drop a can of food into the donation bin with overdramatic ceremony and fold hearts and pig faces from flat sheets of paper.
Juniors who pop up to move the TV stand out of the way. Do whatever needs to be done. Simply because the youth pastor isn't here, and someone ought to do it. Sit in circles to break apart a John Piper talk. Listen and watch and do their best to buy in. Even when their bodies are tired from Homecoming and their hearts are a little wigged out by this week's differences.
But, always together.
Because the bravest thing that a Gryffindor can do is allow some one else to come alongside. Expose a little of their mess and walk through it in community. Pick up the slack. Let someone else guard your back. Brave.
My Ravenclaws are bravest when they wrestle with ideas and concepts. My Slytherins when they actively work to change their world.
When they are scared, they isolate. They lose their curiosity. They become passive.
Fear makes them the opposite of what they truly are.
And, yes. That means that their defining factors are the very things that require the most fearlessness. But, I think that that is way it works in the Kingdom. Here, in the Holiness of the Presence, peace becomes the plumb line. Courage becomes standard. And, the things that our flesh finds difficult become the new normal.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
This is the One who makes us fearless.
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