For a middle school event one afternoon, we decided it would be fun to play Sardines. The whole church was fair game. If you haven’t played Sardines before, it’s sort of like hide and go seek, backwards. So one person goes and hides, and everyone else goes looking for them. If you find the hider, you get into the hiding spot with them, and this goes on until the whole group is crammed into one hiding spot. The best hiding spot of the day was the elevator (genius!) but the most memorable was the chapel.
In our chapel there is a wall toward the back of the room with a small space behind it, perfect for someone in need of a place to hide. One by one the middle schoolers crammed into the spot until the leaders were the only ones left looking. As we walked into the chapel we heard a few giggles come from within the dark room and we knew we must be getting closer. We flipped on the lights and as the youth climbed out from the spot, one of the chapel candle sticks tumbled over and broke. (Many thanks to Jane for her gracious reception of this news and her willingness to replace it for us).
Since then the chapel has been off limits for Sardines, which is a wise move, but I do find myself wondering if sometimes we do the same thing with our faith that we did with the chapel. We are okay with faith when it is safe, predictable, quiet. But then God interrupts our lives, the Holy Spirit moves in us to do something new, Jesus breaks into the daily routine and knocks something over and so we respond by quickly putting our lives back together and doing our best to prevent it from happening again. What would happen if when we felt God challenging us to do something, we did it? What would happen if we let Jesus be the radical, life altering Lord of our lives that he can be instead of a safe, boring churchey guy who likes to hold little lambs and pat small children on the head?
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