Eternity in the Middle

Sunday evening. Intersect.

Spring break and lingering sunshine draw the kids outside like a magnet, where they make up games with a frisbee and a foam ball; chase each other in circles up and down hills, around the outside of this little building across the parking lot from where they served this morning.

These are our Sunday school teachers. Our middle school leaders. Our Student Owners.

Willing hands move chairs and football tables and TV stands. Meet early to plan things that they haven't told us about yet. And, it might be almost cheating how easy this is, how simply they fall into these patterns and this community.

Beyond us; despite us; alongside us.

Working together to find eternity in the middle.

The youth pastor comes panting up the stairs to where we stand greeting the few who trickle in on this quiet Sunday, the entrance a passthrough, rather than the sticking point that it is when winter reigns. He is smiling, exaggerated, a thousand times removed from his moments earlier frustration of setting up sound and slides.

"The game already started! It just happened! Let's go play!"

Play link tag in this softness just before the sunset. Come inside to kids who MC and lead music in this echoing space that they have filled with light. Who laugh often and easily.

Listen to a lesson in this careful arc that they have set up. Because, no one minds the switch to chairs so long as they can see each other. So long as they're not doing this thing alone.

Team building activity by small group. Split, as always, by the months we were born.

Smiles that dance across faces, light eyes, as they enjoy these things, these moments that they have created.

A game played simply because they felt like it. Spontaneous clapping in a church that often can't hold a rhythm to save its life. Bodies curled cross legged on the floor to sing By Your Side, as a tangible reminder of our smallness and the bigness that holds us. Voices that sound a dozen times stronger than nineteen students and four leaders.

Collectively certain that this is right and this is good.

Silly commercials instead of breakout questions. Nonsense and holiness wrapped into one as we practice a little of the easy presence of grace.

Because, tonight, with these kids, we can.

We can step back and breathe and enjoy these people. Enjoy the smallness of this group.

Find Christ here.

Not because they are perfect - and certainly not because we are. It's spring and it's Lent and we're gearing up for Haiti and there are a dozen tensions in their eyes that we don't begin to name.

They are tired and ready for a break.

But, they are present. They are here, and they are pouring themselves into this.

They come, and they create space.

Create community.

Breathe grace.

And, it's dark when we leave, when they scatter to homes and coffee shops and wherever they go when they are not here. Still warm, with a wind that promises to bring in blue skies for tomorrow.

An hour and a half.

1.5 out of the 168 before we gather together like this again.

But, maybe, just maybe, we managed to find eternity in the middle. And, maybe, as we go out to be the church, rather than just be at it; maybe we'll find it again.