quote

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.

C.S. Lewis, "The Four Loves"

church

Last Sunday, I went to a small church in Midtown--Grace Midtown Church, a plant of a church out in Snellville. I had heard some good things about the church, so made a spur of the moment decision to go when I woke up last Sunday. I'm so glad I went--it was by far the most refreshing "church" experience I've had in a long time.

The service started with a few songs, followed by some announcements. The announcements had very little to do with marketing Grace Midtown, but rather they were primarily about what the church was doing in the community. One announcement was about a group of people going to Piedmont Park to hand out bottled water and love on the people walking in the Atlanta Pride Parade, and another announcement was about a weekly outreach to adolescent girls at-risk for being trafficked into prostitution. When was the last time you heard those announcements from the "pulpit?"

The sermon was on 1 Corinthians 13, the "love passage." Here's a summary: Jesus is the ultimate model of love, in the way he went about his ministry as well as the ultimate display in the cross. Our aim, as followers of Jesus, should be love. The world, your city, your school, your co-workers, will know who you are and what you are about based on the love that you show for others. (Reminds me of the documentary "Lord, Save Us From Your Followers" that I saw recently...but that's for another post.)

After the sermon, the table was set for communion. What followed was time reserved for worship, prayer, and communion. You were welcome at the table as you felt led; there was no "peer pressure" to take communion as I often feel when I'm at other churches. At the end of this time, a guy just walked up on stage and started praying for Grace Midtown and everyone who was in the building that morning. I've never heard a white person in America pray as fervently and as earnestly as that guy did.

It was simple, yet so beautiful. So refreshing to be in a place where the agenda is twofold: love God and love other people. That's it. I'm actually a bit eager to go back.