Dinner Table in Lynchburg, VA

Church #178 was yet again not inside the walls of a traditional sanctuary, but this week God gave us a different set of four walls, and I am beginning to think that is one of the greatest lessons He has been teaching me through this season of the journey.

Today, church happened in the home of a kind man who recently lost his wife.

My family and I picked up a big bucket of chicken and headed over to spend some time with Mr. Layne, and somewhere between the food, the stories, the photographs, the laughter, the memories, the prayer, and simply sitting together, I realized we were having church.

Mr. Layne is a frequent visitor at Virginia Memorial Park and over the last six months has become family to our staff and to my own family as well.

There are people God brings into our lives whom we never could have planned to meet, and somehow, over time, they become part of our story. I believe more and more that we should pay attention to those people.

Not every relationship is accidental.

Sometimes God places someone in our path because we have something to give them, and sometimes we discover they have something to give us too.

Mr. Layne recently preached a sermon to a group of folks at a friend’s church, and he has been so excited to tell us about it. Today we had the privilege of hearing more about that sermon, looking at the next message he is working on, and getting a tour of the home where he and his wife shared forty years of their lives together.

Forty years.

There is something about walking through a home after someone has lost the person they shared it with that makes you understand just how beautiful ordinary life really is.

A house is never just walls, floors, furniture, and photographs. It holds history. It holds laughter. It holds arguments that eventually did not matter, dinners around the table, ordinary Tuesday mornings, holidays, illnesses, celebrations, routines, inside jokes, prayers, and thousands of moments that nobody thought would become precious memories while they were happening.

We looked at pictures. We talked about loved ones. We listened to stories.

And we made time.

That is the sermon on my heart today…

Make time.

When God places someone on your heart, do not always assume you can do it later.

Make the call. Go visit. Take the chicken. Sit at the table. Listen to the story. Look at the photographs. Hold the hand. Say the prayer.

Make time.

We are so incredibly good at telling ourselves we will do things when life slows down, but I am beginning to wonder when exactly we think that is going to happen.

There will always be another responsibility. There will always be another email, another load of laundry, another errand, another deadline, another reason that tomorrow would be more convenient.

But people cannot always wait for our schedules to become convenient.

Love has never been about convenience.

Jesus certainly did not love people only when it fit neatly into His schedule.

When I read the Gospels, I am struck by how often Jesus allowed Himself to be interrupted. He was traveling somewhere, and somebody needed Him. He was teaching, and somebody cried out. He was surrounded by crowds, and one hurting person reached for the hem of His garment. Children came when the disciples thought Jesus had more important things to do, and Jesus welcomed them. Blind Bartimaeus cried out while Jesus was passing by, and Jesus stopped.

I love that word. He stopped.

The Savior of the world, carrying out the greatest mission in human history, still made time to stop for one person.

What does that say about the way we should live?

I think sometimes we are so busy trying to accomplish something important for God that we miss the person God placed directly in front of us.

Maybe the important thing is the person.

That thought convicted me today.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 25 that when we care for others, when we feed, welcome, visit, and serve, we are doing it unto Him.

I think about the Bible differently now.

Ministry does not always announce itself. Sometimes ministry looks like a bucket of chicken sitting in the middle of a table. Sometimes it looks like listening to a man talk about the woman he loved. Sometimes it looks like admiring photographs you have never seen before because the memories behind them mean everything to the person showing them to you. Sometimes it means letting someone preach a little bit of their sermon to you because they have been waiting excitedly for somebody to hear it.

Sometimes ministry is simply giving another human being the gift of your undivided attention.

And that is becoming increasingly rare.

We live in a world where everybody is busy, everybody is rushing, everybody has a phone in their hand, everybody has somewhere else to be, and everybody is thinking about the next thing before the present moment has even finished.

But Jesus was present with people.

I want to be like that. Especially now.

Grief has taught me something about time that I wish I could have learned another way, we always think we have more of it.

Losing my mom changed the way I hear the words of James 4, where it describes our lives as a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes. That verse is no longer an abstract theological idea to me. Life really is short. There are conversations we assume we can have later, hugs we think we can give next time, questions we think we will eventually ask, and visits we keep meaning to make.

Until suddenly there is no later.

That is why when God puts somebody on my heart now, I am trying to listen.

I do not always get it right. I am busy too. My schedule has been exhausting. Life has been heavy. There are days when I feel like I barely have enough time or energy to accomplish what absolutely has to be done, much less add something else. But maybe loving people is not something we are supposed to squeeze into whatever time remains after everything else is finished.

Loving people is the assignment.

Today my family and I sat around a table with Mr. Layne. We ate chicken. We held hands and prayed. We listened. We remembered people we love. We talked about sermons. We looked at pictures. We shared fellowship.

Nothing about that will ever appear impressive on a résumé.

Hebrews 13:2 reminds us not to neglect showing hospitality because some have entertained angels without knowing it. I have always loved that because it reminds me that we never fully know what God is doing through an encounter. We never know why someone crossed our path at exactly the moment they did. We never know what one conversation, one visit, one meal, one hug, or one hour of listening may mean to another person.

And we also never know what it may do to us.

We went there because God placed Mr. Layne on our hearts, but I believe we left with a gift ourselves. We were reminded of the importance of family, memories, fellowship, faith, and simply slowing down enough to hear another person’s story.

That is church to me.

The early church understood something about this that I think we sometimes forget. Acts 2 tells us that believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. They gathered together. They ate together. They prayed together. They shared life.

Today, we broke bread, or perhaps more accurately, fried chicken… together.

We held hands.

We prayed.

We listened.

We fellowshipped.

We talked about God.

We loved one another.

Tell me that is not church.

Maybe there was no communion table, but there was a table where people gathered in love and gratitude.

Maybe there were no stained-glass windows, but there were photographs filled with years and years of memories.

And maybe the sermon God wanted me to hear today was not complicated at all.

Make time.

Make time for the people you love while you still have the privilege of making it.

And most importantly, make time for Jesus.

Because I am learning that when we make time for people, we often discover Jesus sitting right there among us.

I have spent more than three years asking the Holy Spirit where He will lead me next, and lately His answer seems to be less about buildings and more about people. My Sunday schedule has changed, and because of that, this church journey has changed too. But perhaps God knew exactly what He was doing. Maybe He is showing me that after all these churches, all these sermons, and all these miles, the next lesson is learning to recognize the sanctuary when it looks like somebody’s living room.

Church #178 happened around Mr. Layne’s table.

And it was beautiful.

I do not know where the Holy Spirit will lead next week, but after everything this journey has taught me, I know this much, it will be the right place, with the right people, at the right time.

So when God places someone on your heart, do not wait until life becomes less busy.

Go.

Love them while you have the opportunity.

Make time.

Because someday we may discover that the moments we thought were interruptions were actually the appointments God had been arranging all along.

And sometimes the most beautiful sanctuary in the world is simply a table with enough room for one more chair.

I can’t wait to see where the Holy Spirit leads next.

Love you all so very much,

Annie Stewart Lambert