God Met You Here

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courtesy of flickr

 

I went to church on Sunday, I slipped in my seat at the dark theatre, and it was much the same: having known God was meeting me this week; I swayed and danced with joy when the music started. I really couldn’t contain it. I sang, I raised my hands, I moved in union with the music. And He met me there too: in this joyful place.

When the music was over and the sermon about to start, we were invited to turn around and shake hands with people. Turning around, I noticed a man behind me, he was sobbing, his hair shaggy and unkempt. He cried into his hands uncontrollably; I could not see his face. A woman in the row behind him kept her hand on his shoulder, comforting him.

We all sat into our seats and I could hear one of his neighbors speaking to the man behind me. He said yes, I’m okay. It’s been so many years since I’ve been in church. Many years. The neighbor handed him a tissue, asked if he wanted to speak to someone. The man replied I will talk to you after the service; I just need to sit here and be here now.

I thought of the man behind me all week and wondered at his story: why he had left church and why he was back today, what it was that moved him to such deep tears. What had him so broken and hurting so deeply.

When I had turned around, the man was looking up; he wasn’t sobbing anymore, but obviously transfixed and moved. Eyes and cheeks still wet. He stayed in his seat as everyone else cleared the aisles.

Free, I turned to him and reached for his hand, grabbing his with both of my own, meeting his gaze intently.  God met you here, I said

He began to weep again, and the tears began to flow. You’re so beautiful, he told me [said in a way that I knew it had nothing to do with my appearance]. The worship … the way the congregation worshipped … so, so beautiful. And he began to weep freely again.

I tightened my grasp around his hands and let him be in that space, still and transfixed and in awe of the God who met him there: exactly as he was, in whatever brokenness he carried in his heart.

I wondered of all the places a hurting man could have seated himself that day in that great theatre, the most likely place would be in the corner at the back. But today he sat in a row toward the front and at the center, right behind where I was sitting. And part of how God met him and moved in him that day.

 …. and then it moved me

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