"Communion..........."

A good friend stopped by the house yesterday, one whom nearly forty years ago sat with me and Beth on the front steps of his home as we talked of Christ, his manner revealing an influence of drugs in his system and his eyes a window into his soul. He was a “preacher’s kid”, running from “church”, but that particular night we talked of finding anchorage in something other than religion, the prodigal son discovering peace flowed from a deeper well than what he had known growing up in the sanctuary. Now he sat there with us in the living room, dealing with one of those blows that life all too often brings to us, bitterness possibly a choice in this situation, that inner connection, however, providing strength, direction, and a promise proven in the distance already covered. He spoke of seeking “that Moses experience”, that place where assurance was more than just a heart-held faith and “knowing Him” was greater than that which he felt he possessed; but, looking into those same eyes, I saw evidence of that Spiritual flame alive and well, his hunger only an indication of that fact. Yea, though I walk through the valley, Thou art with me… Late yesterday evening, then, Beth and I drove to a nearby facility where one of the “old saints” lay dying, she and her late husband part of the original bunch who birthed our assembly. Two of her children were there with her in a darkened room, she in a comatose state, “crossing over” surely close at hand. Conversation turned to memories, the family picture hanging over the bed revealing eight siblings, our common ground of knowing most of our own journey through roots established in “holiness legality” that nonetheless acquainted us with the reality of His presence in our midst. Our theologies, if examined, would reveal substantial differences. One of us spoke of Benny Hinn. My own wife and I do not agree on a number of perspectives. What none of us can deny, nonetheless, is that point deep within where heaven and earth are joined, an oasis created at the same altar years ago, one to which we have returned again and again even though time has physically moved us from the pews we occupied back then. He is “the tie that binds”, with each of us in whatever tomorrow holds……