Tapestry

Sometimes I wonder if I am doing this right.

There are moments when I let myself listen to the well trained part of my soul that whispers that there is a difference between "serving at church" and "going to church," that church is a thing to be sat through, rather than an identity to be lived out, that there is only one right way of doing this thing.

And, then I look into the eyes of my kids.

And, I remember that the Church is a people.

Church is a people that can serve and play and listen and pray and demonstrate to the world what it means to be a living, breathing, messy, beautiful community. So, it's church when I sit in service with my parents, but it's also church when I listen to that teaching later, because the service time is spent living it with my kids.

If the Church is a tapestry, an incomplete work of art, then this is how we weave together the layers of life.

Several of the middle schoolers work in the children's wing. Two layers. We pass each other in the hallway or on the lawn, trailing trains of little people behind us. Three layers. We sit mixed in with them during story or music, or we work together to help tiny fingers finish a craft. High schoolers work alongside and in between and everywhere that they could possibly serve. Four layers.

To sixth and seventh and eighth grade minds, this is what the Body does. Layers upon layers upon layers. Practicing being mature in their faith, but with older hands waiting there to catch them if they start to fall.

And, it's amazing.

I love when they talk to me about 'their kids' the way that I talk about them as 'mine.'

A new sixth grader acknowledges the upcoming transition by asking whether it was weird to teach Sunday school without *brother* and *brother's girlfriend* who graduated from high school this past spring, and I have to smile, even as we talk about what it's like to have a sibling leave for school.

Not because he misses them or because we have changed the world with ninety seconds of conversation, but because of the absolute muddle of categories that just fell from his lips.

Elementary. Middle school. High school. College. Adult.

Even in this big church, with all of it's classrooms and schedules and (much needed) directors of this and that, he somehow understands what it is to be a part of the Body. Everyone mixed up, tumbling over each other, creating stories faster than we can share them, teaching each other, making messes, and learning together: part of the Body.

Over and over, parents and Sunday school teachers and youth leaders have told them that work is worship, that community and relationship and reality intersect with the Divine, that there is Truth and Glory to doing life together.

That the layers help make this thing beautiful.

So, we get glue on our fingers, water on our shirts, and grass on our feet, and we prove to ourselves that these little people who sing Ten Thousand Reasons in lisping baby voices are the Church.

We run and throw balls and answer questions and remember that these middle schoolers who nudge my hands up during music with a quiet, "You forgot," are the Church.

The tiny group of highschoolers, with the boy who remembers to ask how my sister is doing in South Carolina, they are the church.

The adults mixed in with every age and the hundreds of people who sit in any given service.

These are what our portion of the Church looks like on Sundays.

And, it's okay not to be everywhere at once, okay not to be in service, because this is Church, and it's never had much real formula outside of loving Jesus and honoring one another.