A mortar of love

A few weeks ago, Ramona shared in the evening prayer group that she had spent some time at the church that evening when no one was around. She said, she could feel the love and the sense of community in this place even in its emptiness.

Her feeling echoes what other people have told me about the tangible welcome in our community. I have heard people say how coming to our church feels like coming back home even though they've never been here before. How they feel welcomed like family even though they are a stranger and even though they are often being welcomed by people who were themselves strangers only a day before.

Our church community, our church building, is alive with love. That's a love that has soaked into each one of us but also into the concrete and the chairs and the soil. That's a love that has grown from each person who has come to volunteer and share their time, energy, and heart. From each person who has come to donate and pray and give thanks. But it is also a love that has grown from each person that has received from it: healing, welcome, fullness in all its forms.

Rather than diminishing, it's a love that grows and strengthens each time it is shared. It's a love that doesn't follow the laws of physics. It isn't conserved. It isn't finite. Instead it multiplies and extends and deepens each time it is given and received. It's a love without limit. These spaces vibrate with the energy of God's steadfast, unending love. It's in everything and everyone. And I think, that's as it should be. We are all of us and everything, all one in God's love. But somehow, here through this movement together of all of us towards giving and receiving love, it has been made manifest, visible, touchable, even in the empty spaces and even in the dark. I can think of no greater testament to the power of community than that.

Dianne Garcia