a narrative in the life of...

Last Wednesday, was, if I remember right...a beautiful day. Actually I have the tan lines to prove it...tan lines which I got from sitting by the fountain, reading I & II Timothy and Titus in preparation for our Thursday session.

And that is me trying to be creative in my introduction to a reflective, non-academic entry. I'm sorry that I so blatantly failed.

Anyways -- here I was, a bit sunburned but ready to discuss Paul's letters to young church leaders. The session began as they ordinarily do -- with prayer requests. That particular night there were four prayer requests that were especially heavy -- the kind of prayer requests that can't be mitigated by words of consolation. The Professor leading the session decided that we were going to take as long praying for these people as we wanted or needed to. He said that if we never talked about the texts, that would be fine.

Well, our class session is three hours long, and we didn't stop praying until there were only thirty minutes left. By the end of the time we were singing hymns, huddled on the floor and surrounded by used tissues.

For our institutionally required homework, our professor asked us to simply reflect on and write about this time. So here follows that reflection:

For the first ten minutes of this "reflective" time, I sat trying to manifest some right emotions about the night. Maybe this isn't the point, but I wasn't really that affected by the night.
There were definitely moments when I believe that God manifested Himself to me -- there were moments when I genuinely felt compassion for my friends and prayed for them out of love. There were lines in songs and portions of scripture that spoke the truth I needed to hear. But despite these moments of clarity and peace, I had unfulfilled expectations -- in some vague emotional way.
Maybe I am missing the point. Maybe it is inappropriate to search after a certain revelation of God, a pure feeling that is promised in prayer and worship and doesn't come. Again, a certain expectation in daily life for an ideal joy, joke, mood to characterize me that doesn't.

Okay end self-reflection before I go insane.

Begin to reflect on the event itself -- The first thing that strikes me is the community of this event. My Torrey Group has about 15 people in it, and we are not all best friends -- we see eachother twice a week, totaling 6 hours. Yet Thursday night we saw one another in weakness. No one pretended to offer solutions, rather open brokenness elicited honest empathy, from one human to another.
United by concern, confusion and pain, we entreated God for His mercy. In situations which demanded more than human wisdom can offer, we joined together to plead to the only One with infallible counsel. That is the second thing that strikes me.

I know that in description these truths sound simplistic, but in application, when lived, they are profound -- especially when one considers how rarely we rightly relate to others and to God.

Yes, I think that is what was beautiful about Thursday night. We were in our right places -- equal and compassionate to eachother, subservient to a merciful God.