Sometimes we think that we are in need of a perfect home with everything neatly in place to show hospitality. And sometimes we think we need a perfect heart that has it all together to invite someone in and build that home. But there are homes we build with our friends not with hands but with conversations of openness and honesty, with the comfort to be as we are, who we are, where we are now. With all our sins and struggles and all our questions and doubts. Sharing death and grief, sex and desire, our needs, deepest inadequacies and regrets. We uncover the demolition in our hearts, unafraid of displaying the rubble, unafraid of leaving the keys to the doors we’ve always locked for someone else to walk in. In the face of each other’s rubble, there is no space for judgement, only the realisation that we all stand on the same levelled ground, a holy ground, where our pain and our struggles are communally felt, without measure, without degrees. Hospitality is the fearlessness to offer others a key into your warzone, and the fearlessness to choose to be present with another.

Many of us were raised strictly associating spiritual growth with the attendance of bible studies, worship evenings, quiet time and locking our bedroom doors in prayer. But there is spiritual growth at 2am at the back of a pickup truck, with seven hearts drawn in laughter and in love. There is growth in 6am swims through the river and in sharing water shoes when the rocks become too harsh beneath your feet. There is growth in conversations over eggs benedict and in sharing the words of people who have previously hurt and condemned us, and the relationships that have left us feeling less than who we were. There is growth in reconnecting with old friends and learning the hearts of new ones, because where there are people, there is God, and that is where we grow and self discover. There is growth in the daily victory of waking up and trying, trying, and trying again. There is growth in struggling through loss to believe that God is good, and there is also growth in firmly believing through the tragedy that God is good.

When we let God out of the man-made spiritual boxes we have created, we need not look far or deep or wide to see His face, but to the heart next to us to realise that He is here. For long we have found Him in foreign mission fields and in retreats, yet now we are awakened to find Him in His people, the church, the home that is built without hands.

After years of living under the weight of expectations and who we “should” be, many of us have locked so many doors of our hearts away for the fear of being known, for fear of being perceived as not spiritual, as not a man or woman of God. When we have tasted the condemnation of a community, that labels and silences us, our fears can only be rational and our walk becomes heavy. We were never called to pretend a false state of perfection. We were created in the image of Community for community. A community that is real, that moves from individualism to a place where we can reach out and ask why we’re created in a fallen world or why it’s so hard to hear God’s voice sometimes.

We all naturally gravitate to the community that will accept us for all we bring to the table, so we find ourselves projecting the finished product of ourselves that we believe our community desires so that we can find our home. All the while we live with the fear of truly being known and found out. We live in fear that one day someone will tear down the door to our demolition and see the truth; to see our addictions and the tears that keep us up at night. But Christ was always interested in the real authentic version of ourselves. Christ was never interested in the finished product more than he was in our journey to wholeness. And community was only ever meant to be a place without fear. A place where all we ask is to see with loving eyes, instead of with defense or judgment, the person before us. All of the wonder, grace and godliness lying in the demolition that is yet to be restored. We hope in the yet to come but we love and live the now of each other – no matter how much is taken apart. Hospitality is loving without the need to put it all back together. And hospitality never demands an invite. It waits, it loves, it is patient.

To our friends on that August summer night, we are eternally grateful for your stories.

“Maybe we’re all just shiny balls of light inside human machines.

Maybe we’re all trying desperately to convince others that the noise they hear coming out of our mouths is an accurate reflection of the intentions of the shiny ball of light inside the machine.

Maybe it screams,

“I am real in here, I am real in here, I am real here.”

Maybe the light inside me just wants to know, if you’re real too.”

-Iain Thomas

Co-written with Makrina

And there’s a seam in my heart, one I trace back to spending hours pouring my soul over, needle to thread, weaving through all the truths I believed I must live, and all the expectations that would keep my life neat, keep it tidy. Because who longs to live a messy life displaying only rugged edges and pulled out threads all over? Yet with every stitch, it feels like I closed the hollow in my ears, unable to hear, sealed the passion burrowing in me, unable to live. For to be fully alive, is to be wholly attentive to the Voice that calls you into being, and to allow the flame inside you to burn as fierce and as loud as the Voice.

There is a song bottled in the heart, a beautiful symphony that awakens the soul to live out audaciously. We stifle the lyrics through finance-focused careers, pleasing those around us and masking who we are that we may be accepted. Yet every Word calls for embracing the unknown, to live day by day, uncalculated, unplanned, radically obedient. And in that radical obedience, a radical defiance to all the suppose-to-do and the should-do’s, shaking off every expectation we claimed as our own.

In our desperation to stitch our frayed seams to picture perfection we neglect the tell tale signs of the thread as it pierces our fabric. So when there comes a day when the thread snaps and the material wears thin from carrying a weight it was never meant to bear, what will the mark the needle left tell? There is the thread I stitch with, the thread of performance, perfectionism, scarcity and of comparison. The thread of lies, insecurities and of living for the applause that never seems to arrive. The thread that tightens and holds the fabric is the very thread that tangles us into an insolvable knot.

There is an otherworldly thread. This thread like the ECG on a monitor is the thread that does not tie but flows, as a steady thrum of a heartbeat bursting from our chest, chasing the truth planted in our hearts and  bursting the seams of what is ordinary or expected. This thread is the thread of no seams, no limits, no bounds, no man made edges. This thread does not try to tuck in the chaos inside our world of sadness neatly away. Chaos is with the fabric, every fabric you’ll find it embedded in the fibres; otherworldly fibres that connect our spirit to the Spirit of God. For it is His Kingdom that lies within. It is His Kingdom that fills.

Sometimes my heart aches; am I really free? Do I live free or do I live confined to social and cultural expectations? Perhaps even my very own expectations. Often the well beaten path seems like the only option, when your feet are unsteady and choices seem heavy. But maybe all it takes is to open up your eyes and look beyond these sheltered gardens to see  there is a whole forest out there beckoning you to explore its acres.

I’m beginning to understand that God has given us our passions for a reason. They are chosen and they are precious. We are not meant to be smoldered. Smoldered, by the piles of to do lists and meaningless business, obligations and “should dos”. Because what if there really is no “should” in life? Could the words of Esther, “Perhaps this is the moment for which I have been created” (Esther 4:14) hold true in each and every moment?

I believe we are made for adventure; we are made for more.

May we live zealously with purpose, realizing that every choice is a stroke of paint in the picture He is painting of our lives.

May we stop living as prisoners of all the should-do’s.

May we choose to stop calculating our every step.

May we allow the melody to rise, that we may unashamedly burst at the seams.

Co-written with Monica

(Photo courtesy of Mykola Lunov)

“Seriousness is not a fruit of the spirit but joy is.”

– Gareth Gilkeson, Rend Collective

Joy. I think we miss it. I cannot recall preachers teaching kids that joy is the heart of God. I cannot recall a sermon that tells of the joy of worship.

I watch the kids as they endure long hours of church services. I watch how their experiences of boredom translate in their minds to God-is-boring. How praising Jesus becomes a monotonous chore.

Where are the kids who love to sing the praises of the Lord?

This query beckons another: where are the people of God who teach these kids that joy is the heart of Jesus? Where are the joyous ones who will not only teach but also live a life of praise?

Where are those who will heed to this simple command?

“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.”

We justify our lives, we claim that the world is home to many thieves of joy. We live as if misery is our default, and praise becomes mere words, often a drag. But that is never the heart of God.

There is one truth, one truth that I ought to never forget:

Joy, it is a choice.

No person or circumstance can rob you of joy, for joy is a choice. To choose to rejoice despite the storm and despite the fierce stones.

Joy is a choice.

To come before Him in prayer and worship is to come before the Holy heart of God. To come before the Holy heart of God is to see the truth of Who He is and to leave with it imparted onto our souls. To come before the Holy heart of God is to sing with the Psalmist “in your Presence is fullness of joy.”

I observe a stern, seriousness in worship. The uptight, tight-fisted, legalistic worship.

Where is the joy that caused ancient heroes to dance and sing and shout for His wondrous Name?

Life should be a celebration of the goodness of God.

Heaven is celebration, where all tribes and all nations and all His loved ones celebrate before His holy throne in joy and adoration. That is the life we should be living now, heaven starts right here.

Ancient heroes played the lyre, sang songs, wrote poems and danced before the God of joy. There’s an art in celebration, where every soul brings before Him praise in various forms.

Who will teach our kids to be creative and find their spark? Who will tell the kids that we all find our own moments of pure, intimate joy with the Lord in diverse ways?

We will. We will be the people who know joy in His presence. We will be the painters, the writers, the singers, the dancers, the dreamers, the preachers, the poets, the cooks, the athletes and the producers who display the art of celebration.

For, eternity starts right here.

Heaven’s song is here.

Joy is here.

 

“The Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven”

C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

“Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things;
 let this be known to all the world. Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion,
 for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.”

Isaiah 12:5-6