We're flirting just on the edge of normal time.
Trinity Sunday. These uncertain days where heat gives way to thunderstorms and desert bred teenagers stand out to talk in the rain as if their very skin needed to soak up this liquid, this refreshment that comes warm and gentle from the sky as a reminder that growth can be soft, change can be bright. Fiery colors that paint the clouds, orange and red, brilliant, tumultuous.
Because,
our kids are brilliant and tumultuous in the midst of it, one moment
steady and close as a summer sky, the next so wildly variegated that
neither my head nor my heart can spin fast enough to keep up with
them.
And,
I am reminded, once again, of the visceral way that we respond to
change around here, the way that we seem to stretch moments until
they are shallow and thin and somehow briefer than all of our poking
and prodding would suggest. And, yet, not.
There
are only two 5th grade girls this week, but they ask to stay our own
group, to sit in the sunshine on this familiar hillside and talk
about summer - shallow conversations while their fingers tap at
simple games of my phone. Mad Libs in the hallway while they wait for
the moment that I slip away to serve brownies and ice cream with the
high schoolers. Nothing. Everything.
In
three years, they will have forgotten the verses and the lesson plans
as thoroughly as the 8th graders who don't recall that they used to
be the small group that had memorized more answers than anyone else.
But, they will remember these moments. They will remember that church
smelled like warm grass and felt like sloped ground beneath their
feet. Remember that we played games and we laughed as often as we
prayed, that we learned each other's hearts even when we couldn't
remember each other's names. That church is a place to be safe and be
known and be loved.
That
the same sense memories that bring the middle schoolers in and out of
these familiar phases will prove powerful to them as well.
Because, really, that's what Church is, isn't it? A place to put hands and feet and sights and scents to the intangible wonder of Grace.
To wash dishes and carry tables, to scoop ice cream until our hands are tired, and to simply sit and wait. A place where, sometimes, our mess comes rising to the top, and things are beautiful regardless. Fragile, soft, almost translucent in the daylight, but glowing strongly in the dark.
We have another candidate for the youth pastor position visiting with his wife, and the whole lot of us - kids are leaders alike - are amped up an extra notch or two at the anticipation of it. Quick to jump in to play games with him, to pray for him from the stage, to laugh at all of the appropriate places. A little more snarky than normal during the senior interviews, goofier, less serious. Generally falling all over ourselves like a pile of puppies in a pet shop window.
"Here we are!"
"Do you see us? Do you like us?"
"Love us! Take us home!"
Until the sky thunders and the glass doors, always loose in their frame, rattle with the wind. It's been doing this around here lately, filling the sky with pillars of sunlight and sunset and towering black clouds that combine like a shot from an apocalypse movie playing out before our eyes. Because rain always seems to befuddle the desert dwelling.
But, they scramble up the stairs after the game, out the door, into the parking lot.
And, then they stop.
Hands out, heads up, under this warm, gentle rain that falls against a brilliant orange and red sunset over the roof of the church building across the parking lot. As if Grace itself were dripping down into their hair and the cracks between their fingers. Too soft to clean the smears of ice cream that mark the asphalt. Perfect for standing and talking, about books and stories and listening to voices that are different than ours. Perfect for breathing. For remembering, that, even though the next few weeks promise to be a whirlwind of graduation and end of school year and grief marked anniversaries...
Grace falls like rain.
Then do not marvel, o Master,
that I question You at night!
I fear that by day
my weakness could not withstand it.
Yet I comfort myself that You will take up and claim
my heart and spirit for life,
since everyone, if only they believe in You, shall not be lost.
Be encouraged, fearful and timid minds,
take hold of yourselves, hear what Jesus promises:
that through faith I shall achieve heaven.
When this promise is fulfilled,
up above
with thanks and praise,
I shall glorify Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
who are Three in One.
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