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Experiencing God in the Spaces in our Lives
In this season of Lent, I find myself with a few random thoughts. (To be honest, that experience is not limited to Lent, but that’s neither here nor there). Bear with me as I walk through a few of those . . .
Thought one: Practically every pastor I’ve ever had has at some point preached a sermon on the Liminal Space. The threshold; the space between what was and what will be. To me, Lent feels like a 40-day long liminal space. The seasons of Christmas and Epiphany are over, but Easter is not yet here. Lent is that space in-between. A time of reflection and anticipation.
Thought two: As someone who has sung in choirs pretty much his whole life, when I think about experiencing God, I tend to think of musical experiences.
My church youth choir toured the country every summer, singing in churches and staying in the homes of those church members. I remember one year we sang in a small Methodist Church in rural Kansas. That community had been rocked by the death of several youth in the previous few months, one by suicide. They were fragile and hurting. And then this choir of 50+ teenagers appeared in their midst, singing about the love of Jesus. “Greater is he that is in me, than he that is in the Lord.” I experienced God’s healing grace in that small town that day.
In college, my university chorus toured extensively in the US and Europe, singing everything from the “big stuff” by Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and all the rest to the old Spirituals of African American slaves, and everything in between. We visited small Baptist churches in South Carolina and big concert halls and cathedrals in Vienna, Salzburg, Venice, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. In what was then still Soviet-era Zagorsk, Russia, we sang in an ancient Russian Orthodox Monastery. As I saw wizened old women hear the music of the faith of their childhood for the first time in decades, tears streaming down their faces, I experienced God.
Tying thoughts one and two together: There is often a liminal space when music is performed. It occurs when the last notes of the performed music fade away, but the audience / congregation has not yet reacted. In those three, four, sometimes five seconds everyone, both the performers and the listeners, reflect on what they just sang / heard. And then, the response. Sometimes it’s rapturous applause. Sometimes it's a few quiet Amen’s whispered from the Nave. Regardless, I always experience God in those silent few seconds.
In this Lenten Liminal Space, as we reflect on what we’ve just sung or heard or done, and as we anticipate the coming joys of Easter Sunday, let’s sit quietly together for a few seconds in the silence and appreciate the moment we are in.
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