"Fellowship............................."

Beth and I both attended the evening service Sunday. The music can get a little too loud for old ears at times, especially when you’re seated but a few rows from the front; but McKenna and Noah, our two youngest grandchildren, were participating in a drama skit and we wanted to be close enough to be “one with them” in its unfolding. There must have been twenty, at least, on that stage, ranging in age from eleven to maybe eighteen. They were all dressed in black, more so to establish one’s focus on the lyrics of the song they brought forth than anything else, the words lip-synced by an older girl in front and slowly embracing the whole group in the message it proclaimed. Along the way it all fell into God’s anointing, the Holy Spirit overflowing, spilling out to connect with the congregation as a whole; and, in the final moments, skit turned into Pentecost, people coming forth to join with them in tears and tongues for about fifteen or twenty minutes that “weren’t in the program”. Eventually, with our pastor out of town, his son would speak to us on “prayer”, on his belief that we’ve failed to teach each other, not just the importance of such union with Christ, but the essential elements that create it in so far as it being more than a few words thrown toward heaven in petition. In truth, his theme was merely an explanation of what had just happened in our midst. If faith is only held in our heads, what do we really possess? It must come up “out of our belly”, a gift of God that, while securing us in the next step, yet knows anchorage down deep in the depths of all that we are; and such relationship must be maintained in a sense of never being “conquered”, but always a lesson being learned…….