Stories

A few years ago I took part in a couple of the small groups that the church had started offering. Groups of us would get together to read the Bible and talk about the intersection of faith and real life. Gathering with people of different ages, backgrounds, and beliefs was stimulating and eye opening. I was frequently humbled by people’s honesty, and by the mysterious ways God had moved in their own lives.

The setting was casual and safe, and it allowed us to take up both the big and the small questions about faith and life together in an open and frank way. Those groups were great in their own right, but they also came with an unexpected bonus: a couple of really amazing friendships.

Not long after those groups wrapped up, I got together with a couple of the guys who had participated. We were all pretty new to the Berkshires, about the same age, and looking for people to connect to. We now get together about once a month for beers and some hangout time. Our conversations range from the mundane frustrations of work, to politics, to sports, to relationships, to parenting, and everything in between. We laugh, we vent, we let our guard down and we open up the fullness of our lives. And in the course of those conversations, we usually hit at least once upon some aspect of our shared Christian faith.

We wrestle with what it means to try to follow Jesus in the everyday of life, the good stuff and the hard stuff. Talking about faith is just a natural part of our conversations, and it’s part of why these friendships are, for me, probably the best and most meaningful friendships I’ve made since college.

If I’m being honest, I don’t think I expected to find that here at church. But in retrospect, I should have. Because where else do we get together to talk about faith and life in the same breath?  Where else do we grapple with what it means to try and live as Christians out in the world, with all its beauty and complexity and challenge? We do that here, in church. And I think it’s precisely because my friendship with these guys started in church that our friendship outside of church naturally incorporates conversations about faith. We were able to try that out here first, and so out there, the conversation continues, to the point where there is no longer any distinction between in here and out there.

Following Jesus is hard. Sometimes I feel that as I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten even harder. Maybe that’s why I value these guys so much. Somehow their friendship pulls me back to my center when I start to drift. These friendships help make me a better Christian. They are, for me, a true sign of God’s love and presence in my life.