Occasionally, I get what feels like a grand sense of things. It is as if I get to see a landscape from altitude. As if looking down from 30,000 feet as though I were flying in a plane. I don't claim any "special" insight, I think it is just a function of being present in the moment and listening.
One of the venues where I experience this most is in preaching on a weekly basis and hearing what others are preaching in the same season. I hear commonalities in the intersections at which what I have been led to speak to in my faith community and where speakers are led to speak in other faith communities from all over the world.
I've experienced this phenomenon with some consistency over the past 30 years. At pastor gatherings, conferences, even simple lunch meetings, there are threads of similarity that appear with timely consistency. Now with the advent of social networking, not only has the frequency of these occurences increased, but the worldwide footprint of them has as well. Another instance happened for me just a few minutes ago.
Today, I shared with my faith community the thought that God has a hand in placing us in specific space and time for divine relationship and purpose. I asked people to consider how life might be different if, rather than thinking of us "choosing" our friends, to consider how it might be if our friends are perhaps "chosen" for us (to fulfill divine experiences). If we follow the opportunity, our friendships can be mutually gratifying and create transcendent experiences. I suggested that we have been "brought together" as a faith community for a divine purpose that is beautiful and good and greater than what we can merely achieve on our own.
A friend posted on his social wall that his pastor said the following this morning... "I didn't plant this church. This church planted me." Though I don't know the full context, that quote would have fit seamlessly in the gist of what I was sharing this morning.
Ironic? Coincidental? I want to think that it is more than that. I want to believe that we "live and move and have our being" in the God who is trying to lead people into relationship that is far greater than anything we can create for ourselves and it excites me to imagine where the grand scheme of things will lead us.
I'll keep listening.
What are you hearing?
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