You Belong
I want to tell you about a very intimate experience I had with the Lord last week, but I’ve been struggling to find the words without sounding like a sentimental cheeseball. So if tender and sweet moments bother your bitter, cynical heart, here’s your trigger warning. Go find a Facebook comment thread to stew in.
As I’ve shared before, I’ve been preparing to begin a spiritual direction program this summer, and that preparation has required an increased focus on and openness to what the Spirit is saying and doing in my life. I’ve discovered that the more time I spend with God the more time I want to spend with God, which probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me.
You mean to tell me that God is faithful and just and merciful and fills your life with more peace, more joy, more love, the more you hang out with him? Who woulda thunk it?! The God of abundance wants to bless you (and me) abundantly. Wild.
There’ve been more than a few times I’ve been hanging out with God and nothing has happened to me that I can sense in the moment. I haven’t had a profound vision. The Bible didn’t immediately speak to me. The chapters of a spiritual text weren’t life changing. And yet, something is different in my soul as I’ve gone about the rest of my day. There’s a stillness on the surface of the water, an anchor steadying me as waves try to rock and shift my raft. Those days I feel unflappable.
Unflappable is a hilarious word. Don’t even try my flaps, they are pinned down, tethered, tied in, and zipped up. I am unflappable!
You can be flappable, though hardly anyone says it. Actually, that state of mind seems to be an epidemic. Flappable people are skittish, jittery, nervous, prone to panic, wracked by worry, and easily upset. This is what I picture when I think of flappable:
But here there’s a stillness on the surface of the water. Here, the anchor holds.
So I was in a worship service at our church conference last week, and I was feeling flappable. It was the last day. I was wrung out. There was a moment in a previous session in which someone made me feel unwelcome, and even though many, many other people make me feel welcome in that space, it had gotten under my flaps. All the tent strings were loose.
I knew, from practice, that the best way to get back to that stillness, that anchor, was to turn my eyes to Jesus, and let him answer.
When I sing along to praise music, my whole body gets into it. I raise my hands, I sway, I dance, sometimes I march (not like a drum major, just, like, walking in place, or something whatever it’s probably weird but get over it), and often I fold my arms across my chest in a hug, as if I’m embracing a baby. I don’t know why, but I’ll even pat my own shoulder to the rhythm of a heartbeat, the way I used to do with my babies.
So there I was, feeling a little rejected, hearing words of unwelcome on repeat in my brain, swaying to the music and hugging myself, when all at once I caught a vision of Jesus. He pulled me into his embrace, wrapped his arms around me, and tucked me into his chest, letting my head rest against him. He held me close and let the tears stain his shirt and said, “You belong.”
You belong.
There are many places and spaces that can try to make us believe otherwise, badgerish bullies who think they have a corner on God’s grace and can say who’s in and who’s out, but I am here to tell you that God has another word for you, and it is bigger and better and truer and purer than any snarling know-it-alls with their cheap shots and biting lies.
You belong.
Let the Lover of your soul sing that word over you. You are not alone. You are seen. You are loved. You are treasured. You are made in the image of God, for Christ’s sake! Literally, for Christ’s sake! You are made in the image of God, for the glory of God, and no one can strip you of that belonging. You are a child of God. No one can take your inheritance from you.
There may be places and spaces that decide to hang a No Trespassing sign on their doors and wrap some barbed wire around their property. That’s okay. They did the same to Jesus and his disciples too. When he sent them out, Jesus told his disciples,
“If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town” (Matthew 10:13-15 NRSVUE).
The One who said these words holds the key to a kingdom in which you are already a citizen, already an heir, and you get to carry that passport in the pocket of your heart everywhere, from church pews to protests, from morning devotions to candlelight vigils, everywhere. You belong. You belong, you belong, you belong.
And if your flappable heart forgets it, read the words of Romans 8:38-39:
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Or John 3:16-17:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Or 2 Corinthians 10:6-8:
Look at what is before your eyes. If you are confident that you belong to Christ, remind yourself of this, that just as you belong to Christ, so also do we.
You belong.