Will you be reading Hebrews 10: 24-25 in solitude on a park bench or reciting 1 Timothy 2: 5-6 in unison with a congregation? Will it be church altar call or in-home devotional? How will you seek God’s face? Is positioning your posterior in a pew still relevant in our modern age? According to the article “Shifting Faith” by Adrienne Samuels Gibbs in the April, 2011 issue of Ebony Magazine there is a growing number of individuals opting to exempt themselves from Sunday morning services to prostrate before God in a more intimate fashion, alone. I love my church family but, truth be told, I don’t always like church. I think there is something to be said for communing with God on your own terms. Sometimes the organization of religion can befuddle the process in its efforts to officiate. But on the other end of the spectrum – church can be a spiritual meeting ground, a grand opportunity for fellowship with God through relationship with people. Church can most assuredly be the salve that warms the cold ache of spiritual void. Ideally, it is a north star for the wandering soul, leading back to God’s manger.
As for me – I’m what you would call a ‘sitting on the steps’ kind of girl. I’m in the church house but not of it. I don’t stand with my right hand over my heart to the brick and mortar of man. The thing is – my present walk is the sum total of my experiences and through the sunshine and rain of it all I’ve discovered that going to church is a tool that aids but does not inform in its totality my spiritual ins and outs. I go only when I feel lead to do so. In my acquisition of God’s glory I unabashedly hold to Christianity without making any apologies for taking divine instruction in the sacred verses of other faiths. Where there is a premise of Love (God) there shall my heart be also. I believe Alice Walker put it best when she wrote, “Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too!” Prosper in spirit.
Link to Ebony Magazine article "Shifting Faith"
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