Believing Acts

When I first made the big leap from home to the great wide world of college, I found myself in a place where, as my dear friend Gay says, “Christianity is viewed with deep suspicion.” And she is right- it was and it is at that college. I found myself in the throes of an adventure I didn’t fully understood before I embarked. I went a week without meeting another Christian, and for someone who had lived and breathed the church, this was monumental. I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. While this is a typical college adjustment feeling, I remember with great acuity the smallness I felt. It was if the world I knew had suddenly drained down the sewer, and I was left looking through bars to a black world that could not be recovered. It was that great test of the world beyond the nest, beyond the comfort and security of things known and things understood.

But the test of faith felt more than simply part of the normal college experience. The barren land of faith and spirituality in a place so rich in knowledge and experience, rigor and pursuit was a foreign contradiction for me. I sought desperately to reconcile the two, and a few years later, I still find my mind turning those questions on snowy days that bring me back to cold winter days. Can worlds collide, yet survive? Is it an all or nothing? Can hope always be found?

While my heart learnings and soul understandings have been full and healing, and my answers are surprisingly, positive (that will have to be a blog for another day). A remember a distinct moment at an campus gathering a few weeks into school where Christian students emerged from our separate worlds and joined one another in a small room on campus. It was a band of sisters. Tears of joy and pain, relief and suffering flowed as hugs were exchanged and shoulders were leaned upon; we had found one another. It was this brilliant moment of feeling together, a confirmation that what we were about as individuals was greater than something just of individuals- it was community.

What evolved during my time in a snowy little town showed me the glory of Acts 2. If you’ve never read it, you should. Right after the Gospels in the Bible is the book of Acts, or the record of the first happenings of the band of believers after Christ died, rose, and ascended into heaven. Get this:

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

So here are these people, both men and women, gathered together because they believed something with their whole hearts, and then they decided it was better to do it together than apart. And so they did. They did all of life together, the exciting and the mundane, the fun and the difficult. And it was good.

Suddenly, I was seeing Acts 2 alive in my life with new eyes. The band of believers to which I belonged fed hungry college kids on Friday nights, sang Christmas carols around a Christmas tree during Advent, picked apples together, cooked Thanksgiving dinner a week early just for fun, celebrated birthdays, served high school kids, studied the Bible, watched movies, hung out, worked out, cried, prayed, and laughed a whole lot. Yes, and it was good. It was the body of Christ as it is meant to be: broken and poured out in abundance.

And that brings me to Sevilla on January 28, 2007. (Yes, I know I am long-winded and ramble too much, but what you’ll read next is amazing!)

It is my first Sunday in Spain. The neighborhood is beginning to look familiar, and I can locate from my little casa to the panaderia (for fresh daily bread) to the meat market (where the prices are great) to the cafeteria where they sell drinking chocolate, which really is closer to hot pudding it is so rich and smooth. You’ll notice everything revolves around food. Yep, you’re right, and, plus, I’m in Spain, the Mecca of comida rica!

The one place I hadn’t been able to locate with a church. While there are numerous Catholic churches- and even cathedrals- that I pass each day, I was having difficulty finding a place that might suit me better. I resigned to the fact that some church might be more restoring than no church, and opted for the Catholic mass down the street.

My roommate, who wasn’t raised in a Christian home, agreed to go on this adventure with me. Besides, she remembered exactly where the church was better than I did. So, we embarked. Thirty minutes passed by of walking on quiet neighborhood streets- no church. This wasn’t the first time we found ourselves lost, so we just sighed, and focused on getting back to a street we did recognize.

And then we heard it.

The singing of voices. Loud noises of voice and laughter coming from behind a small door on a quiet residential street. We stopped at the door. It was undeniable a church, although there was no sign on the door nor indication of what type of church it was. After a moment of deliberation (What if EVERYONE notices us when we walk in?), my hand flew to the door knob and we slipped into the back of full house. We were at least thirty minutes late to the service, but it proceeded for another two hours. Full of singing, praise, an exciting sermon, and contemplative communion, I found myself, yet again, joined to community. I continually find these places of joy and peace. This community, like others I have experienced, embraced each other and embraced life. I am thousands of miles away from home, and Christ, once again, is reminding me that He is, has been, and will be. His body is alive and active within this world. Here, in Sevilla, Spain, on a road I barely remember how to find, gathers a community that sees the importance of doing life together. Here is a community that sings, prays, and worships like thousands of other communities across the world. They have found one another in this place where they are a minority. They have found life in Christ, and in pursuing this life, life with one another. Once again, it was a reminder that the body of Christ is sacred. It appears in odd places and spaces with different looks and manners. But in the end, those glad hearts experienced a greater abundance and a fuller understanding of the wholeness that comes in being united with Christ and his Church. If the Church is Christ’s bride, I can only imagine the tender love He held in His eyes for it in those moments. In the vulnerable way that a gathering of His people does, the Church radiated and shone in truth and beauty.

I think I’ll head back next weekend.