Go live that life

Today was my second Sunday at First Church and words cannot express how thankful Troy and I feel about serving and being a part of this congregation. The church has given us such a warm welcome and we are finding our way around the place.
Theme today: Life is life and it will be what it is. It is how you handle, or maybe not handle, all that life is that makes life worth living. My favorite theologian, Kenny Rogers, expressed it well on the first 8-track I listened to in 1980: "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run."
Today's slice of life is worth this blog post: I had a 2-hour window of time late this afternoon. Because I'm feeling a need to have my office "together" as if somehow my office is being graded by my worst internal critic, I thought I should squeeze in a trip to IKEA, now 45-minutes from where I work and live. Even as I got ready to leave home, something in me didn't want to drive to Frisco to walk around a pre-planned store that views its customers as cattle which need to be led through stalls and gates.
When I unlocked my car in my parking spot, I found my journal in my hand. That's strange--I can't imagine some profound insight worthy of journaling to come in the middle of IKEA.
The profound insight came way before I made it to Frisco. Didn't even get out of the neighborhood before God put the big stop sign in my way (no, it wasn't the Texas "DQ" stop sign). It was the message board out front of a little neighborhood Presbyterian church that read, "Taize Service in Courtyard: 6:30 pm June 24." I knew that's where I needed to be.
So I stopped, pulled into the parking lot of the park next to the church, spent 45 minutes sitting on this old, large tree that is made for climbing and journal-ed. That's why I needed my journal....God is funny in how things like this get planned. I shared with God and the tree the story of my first week. And at 6:25, I walked over to the church and sat through 45 minutes of music and prayer that kindled in my soul the flames of being a child of God that so easily burn away the distractions of who or what I think I need to be.
The service wasn't flashy; they were Presbyterians. And it is easy to believe in predestination when you see how much Presbyterians look like each other, almost like God said, "I'm going to make a special group of people who will never be on the cover of Vogue but they will be my people and I will be there God and I will call them Presbyterians."
We sat in folding chairs, in the church's courtyard, a mixed-group of people who were so excited to have a visitor and then so sad to hear that I work on Sunday mornings--we sat and we sang and we listened and for a tiny moment, I heard the kingdom of God.
My 2-hours that could have been hurried chronos time rushing to IKEA became simple kairos time that took my mind and reminded me that inside me is a soul wanted to be embodied. "Go live that life," God said.