Meeting Together

I have been thinking all this week about meeting together.  I love meeting up with friends, whether that be deliberately and planned or unintentionally.  It is a real pleasure to catch up with news and enjoy the company.  As Christians we are encouraged by Paul to keep meeting together in order to encourage each other.  Sadly though, most who belong to some part of the organised church consider that meeting together means in a particular building usually on a Sunday morning and probably a couple more times during the week.  The meeting usually consists of some singing, prayers and listening to someone preach on some verse(s) from the Bible.  This also infers that the same people meet at the same time in the same building most weeks.  The sad thing is that this is considered by such people as being the only way of meeting up and is often the accusation put before those who no longer congregate, that now they are ‘outside’ of the fellowship of the church and by association must be limited in their access to God.

How wrong that is!  As has often been stated before, the Church is the people and not a building.  Since leaving the organised meeting, I have found many new Christian friends while many of those that I had considered friends somehow don’t consider me to be one with them anymore.  I have found that the internet is a wonderful place to be connected to friends near and far.  I have reconnected with friends with whom I had lost touch over the past number of years and also been able to visit new friends Joanna and Ian Storie, a couple living in Latvia (I have written about this visit  before in previous blogs – see posts from September 18^th – 23^rd 2011) You can follow Jo’s blog here.  I follow blogs of other Christians and find great encouragement from their journeys, especially when much of what they write seems to echo what I am experiencing.  In fact my online friend Paul Leader blogged about this very subject only the other day.  With tongue in cheek, I’m inclined to say ‘great minds think alike!’ but really sense that it has more to do with the thread of God’s presence weaving its way through it all and connecting our thoughts.  You can find Paul’s blog here.

The flip side of the coin is that God is everywhere and this seems to become more apparent when we no longer keep him confined to a church building until the next Sunday when we come together and talk to Him again, seeking strength to last us through the coming week.  The truth is that wherever I am, God is there.  There is no ‘once a week fix’.  He is Emmanuel – God with us, always, everywhere, at any given moment.  On Thursday I received a daily meditation from Richard Rohr that said:

“God Is Everywhere” (Answer to Question 16 “Where is God?” in the old Baltimore Catechism) Meditation 5 of 52

You cannot not live in the presence of God. You are totally surrounded by God all the time and everywhere. You have no choice in the matter, except to bring it to consciousness. St. Patrick said it well in the prayer attributed to him: God beneath you, God in front of you, God behind you, God above you, God within you.

 (You can subscribe to these daily meditations at this website.)

So I have discovered that God is much bigger than we allow ourselves to think.  He has more friends He wants us to ‘meet’ with and encourage than just those who gather on a Sunday morning in a particular building.  My friends are all over the world and in all walks of life and circumstances.  I like how my online friend Paul once expressed it – it’s like dot-to-dot pictures and gradually with new friends and connections, God is joining up the dots and making a picture much bigger and better than we had ever imagined.  He is not confined to a building or even one place or area. I am finding out how to ‘do church’ differently.  I am learning new and different ways of meeting together so that my horizons have grown bigger and wider.  And I am learning to recognise His touch, voice and teaching all around me in the day to day living and in things that happen.  I am not advocating that the organised building meeting isn’t the way.  For those who find it helpful and good, I’m happy for you and pray you find fulfilment in it.  But I am saying that this is not the only way and that those who find an alternative way of meeting and worship are equally acceptable in God’s sight.  Our God is a great big God!  Amen!