When we first came, first set foot inside these doors, it was late March, almost 6 years ago already. I was quite obviously pregnant with our fourth (living) child. We had come to town over a long weekend, to look for a new house to buy, in this new community, as Nathan would be starting his new job here that next summer. And on that Sunday morning, we figured we should start looking for a new church too. So, we found one, saw it on-line, thought we’d give it a try.

That first morning, the white, brick walls, the pews, wood with faded red cushions, the cross, also of wood, up front with light streaming down from the skylight – they meant very little to me that day, could have been any old building, in any old town. And the people, though they were friendly and warm, they were strangers. I didn’t know then what I know now: that in this place, alongside these people, clinging to these words – His words – I would begin to learn life in community like I never had before.

I’d grown up in the Church, I mean, and I’d met there with other folks most every Sunday for the past 35 years, so I’d heard before, about how Christ is the Head and we are the Body, each part unique, with special gifts. But for some reason, until we came to Trinity, I’d never known how incredibly vital the Church is in each of us being able to live out His purpose for us on earth, how we are bound – one to another, and how, in that binding, that joining together of people, the most beautiful picture emerges of love and unity and peace.

And just what does it look like to begin to learn Love in the Body?

It looks like many, many shared meals, gathered around the table together as One, the food nourishing our bodies and the words nourishing our souls.

It looks like babysitting each others’ kids and attending each others’ birthday parties, getting to know each others’ parents and siblings, friends and neighbors.

It means playing ping-pong, and Spikeball, and goofy board games, attending bonfires and Bunko nights and New Year’s Eve festivities.

It looks like a group of ladies gathering to clean out a friend’s house when her family is moving to Alaska and she is at her wit’s end.

It means dear folks who come to the hospital in the middle of the night to sit and pray with you when your daughter is hurt, or who hold your hand there in the recovery room when you find out your baby is gone and so is your fertility.

It means a kind brother coming to mow the lawn on his day off, week after week, in the 100+ degree heat, when your husband is in Germany for a month.

It means sitting down with a friend in the aisle of the Target store because she came upon a bout of anxiety right there in the store and following her home to make sure she arrives safely.

It means knowing each other’s ‘favorites’ and treating each other to them unexpectedly – drinks and flowers, books and sweets.

It looks like all generations valuing each other and wanting to be together – watching Husker football, celebrating a new knee or hip, grieving the loss of the ability to drive – the grandparents and great-grandparents there in the Body being respected and lifted up, and younger, listening ears desiring to hear their stories of life and love.

It means borrowing and lending tools and sanding someone else’s deck or wood floor, and gathering together six men to move a playhouse one built in the garage, up and over the fence and into the backyard.

It means hurting each other with words, with actions, with inaction – and not running away or lashing out, but meeting together on bent knee, to speak words of truth and grace and forgiveness, overlooking each other’s messiness and seeing all the way in, seeing the very best.

It means loving each other’s children as our own. And words of encouragement one to another, knowing that when one person is suffering, we all suffer together.

It means letting folks into our brokenness and sin, exposing our very deepest hurts and fears and battles, shining Light on them, so that our brothers and sisters can come alongside and battle with and for us.

It means working to create an atmosphere of warmth and genuineness and grace in our lives, where people know that whoever they are, whatever their struggles or quirks or mistakes, they will be unabashedly embraced.

It looks like being together each and every Sunday morning, singly loudly, from the heart, speaking words of affirmation and confession in unison, the repetition of it all, reminding us, drilling into us, who we are and who we are not, and who it is that is Victory and Hope and Unending Power.

It means calling each other back to the Truth, when all that’s rattling around in our own minds is darkness and fear and death.

It is a road of mess and thorns really, living in and among this Body, and yet, it is sweetness and beauty and redemption too.

And so, how has it come to this? How to get from bricks and wood and strangers to my most cherished gift, apart from Christ Himself? Because now, when I enter these very same doors, see the bricks and the wood, the pews and the cross, hear the loud voices speaking and singing as One, confessing all that is wrong with us and the world, and receiving assurance that all is forgiven and being made Right, it’s like the sweetest Homecoming. It feels like all I was ever meant to know, ever meant to be, is in this place, in these words, in these people, somehow. Like Christ Himself, Love Himself is present here.

Not one among us really understands heaven, the Unknown that is yet to come, because none of us here have yet walked there. And still, stepping through these doors, walking through this world alongside these dear brothers and sisters, my heart steadied and strengthened by our union together – I catch a glimpse, a taste, a twinkling of the Perfect World that will surely come. And the gratefulness I feel surpasses all else.

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