Still Here

Still Here

I’m a pack rat, although not in the traditional I’ve-got-stuff-stashed-everywhere sense. I save up memories. The kind that make my nose sting and my eyes fill up with tears. Moments when God seems so close that my heart breaks a little at the awareness of him.

This morning I stretched to set a just-washed plate on the top shelf in my kitchen cabinet, placing my hand on the countertop for balance. When I did, I remembered the evening, two years ago, when an army of women who love God and love me, too, brought salads and themselves and unpacked my belongings with me until the wee hours. Several of those women have moved away, but in the moment of remembering, they were all still here, very near and dear.

Then a snippet of song took me back to a weekend of word and song and food and art and God-ward thought with a ragtag group of believer-artists. And as I write these words, I can see their faces, hear their music, remember their laughter. And they’re still here.

Once, on a bright, cold afternoon, I hiked a trail with a new, strong-shouldered friend. At the top we sat on a flat rock overlooking a river. We told our stories, or parts of them, for an hour or more. As the wind blew and the words swirled around us, I wished I could make the sun stand still. Those moments sped by too quickly, but the memories continue to linger with me.

“The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.”^a

Because of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, if I’ve loved you in a moment, I love you still. If my heart has broken at the beauty of a fleeting afternoon, that beauty’s with me still. His beautiful breaking puts us together, forever, still.

Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

John 17:24, NASB

^a Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1991), 178.