...and God showed up

O Master, from the mountainside make haste to heal the hearts of pain;

among these restless throngs abide;

O tread the city’s streets again:

Till all the earth shall learn Your love and follow where Your feet have trod;

till glorious from your heaven above shall come the city of our God.

—Frank Mason North, 1903

God showed up last Sunday. God showed up in the powerful story of affirmation of the place where a pastor’s core identity and elemental calling each complemented and strengthened the other. God showed up as a diverse congregation gathered to bless one of its own, a young PhD ready to return to his country with the love and nurture of a faith family behind him. God showed up in bread and wine, the body re-membered; and in call to action for peace and justice; and in grief over young lives detained and lost (because God shows up in the grieving, God does). 

But then a funny thing happened. Sarah and I got on the train for home. And God showed up in the singing aloud with the song in his earbuds of the disheveled man a few seats ahead of me (all about that bass, ‘bout that bass, ‘bout that bass, no treble...). And we got our bus transfer, along with a couple struggling with a stroller. And God showed up in the guy in gym clothes who gave up his seat and jumped up to lift the stroller into the aisle beside them. And God showed up in the wondering gaze of the babe who, lifted in his tiny kimono from the stroller, lit up the faces of the strangers all around him. 

And I’m reminded, in a hundred big and small ways, that where and when glimpses of beauty and love break through our isolation and fear, it’s then that Christ walks the city’s streets again. It’s then that God’s kin-dom reveals itself a little more fully. It’s when we learn to follow, that we’ll find we’ve been walking on holy ground all along.