Binding Ties
So last night I was chatting with some friends of mine. Some friends of mine who, on a regular basis, get together to talk about the Bible, God, a book, our lives, or just whatever. Some people call this a small group but I don’t like that because it sounds like some sort of formal meeting, something that I’m forced or obligated to do; something that doesn’t sound like me sitting around chatting with some friends. And they are friends. And they are friends who, like me, are Christians. And like me they are Christians who don’t know everything, who like to get together and share what they know and what they don’t know, to kind of compare notes and see if there’s something we can learn from each other or to learn that there are some things we just won’t know until God wants us to.
A little over a year ago I attended my first “small group”. I wasn’t invited to this small group by a friend, I kinda just picked it out and started going. To really describe how awkward and intimidating this was for me, I’d have to take you through a misguided tour of my own psychosis so we’ll skip that part and I’ll just request that you take my word for it. It was a huge step. But looking back, I think it was one of those monumental leaps of faith that later characterizes your faith and reliance on God. For a while I had been feeling a pull – perhaps a gentle tug – to a spiritual life that was more than Bible verses and praise music. At the time I was immersed in the Bible, keeping a habit of daily scripture reading and study that was only outdone by my dental care. But despite my study, and even a feeling of intense spiritual growth, there was still something missing. I felt so alone.
Along with my loneliness I felt guilt. I couldn’t understand why a growing relationship with God wasn’t enough to cure my loneliness. I thought that I was being disrespectful, ungrateful, unloving, and altogether selfish. And maybe I was. But what I’ve since learned and experienced about God is that He made us “in His likeness”, and part of that means He made us to be relational beings. And while at our most basic level, I believe we desire a relationship with Him whether we know it or not, I know for a fact that we all desire a relationship with someone – with someone specific – with specifically many people. I might have read that in the scripture during my time of intense study – I’m sure it’s in there, if not explicitly then certainly in the subtext, somewhere in between the lines. But I never understood any of that at any level of complexity until I started getting together with a group of guys who were just like me, sharing their struggles and their joys, their likes and dislikes, their questions and answers.
My transformation didn’t happen all at once and, of course, it’s still a work in progress. But when I look back and think about who I was when I first walked into that group and who I am now, I can’t help but know it was completely a “God thing”. I don’t think getting together with a bunch of friends is the only way to know God but I think it’s an integral part of building and understanding a relationship with Him. There are all of these aspects of our spiritual lives: works, faith, scripture, love and grace, and they all seem to point to some sort of relationship, whether it be with our neighbor, our God, or our Savior. Relationships aren’t the foundation upon which Christianity is built, but they are the ties that bind it, and us, together.