THINGS THAT WORKED AND STILL WORK

I like to reflect back over my life and see what worked and what didn’t work.

I like to see when I was at my best and when I was at my worst. What worked usually coincides with when I was at my best. Looking at both of them with equal interest gives me perspective on my life.  I learned and grew from both my successes and my failures, so in the end product, they’re all good.

I look at all the times and experiences in my life and I find there are two that stand our as things that worked and when I was at my best.  The first was my life at Camp, specifically Valley Mill East in Colesville.  The second was my life as a part of the Bible Study Group that met at the McLaren home, that eventually became known as Rockville Community Bible Fellowship.  Interesting, they both overlapped and covered one era of my life.  Those two times and places were where I was home within myself.

My Camp experience is for another story at another time.  These days I am thinking mostly of the RCBF experience.  I guess that is because I am constantly trying to figure out the issue of Church in God’s realm of things.

Whatever we did back in that group, in those days, bore the fruit that still stays with me and it is what I can’t seem to find any where else.  Even now I still connect better with some of those folks, even though it’s been forty plus years since I have seen them.  They know me better than anyone else and give me the spiritual support that the other people I have lived with, studied with, and worshipped with fail to give.  I find myself wondering why that is the case.  My conclusion is that whatever we did back in those days worked and continues to bear good fruit, telling me that it was God at work in that time and place.  My quest is to discover what we did that obviously aligned with what God was doing and is it possible to do it again?

I found a quote from Old Monk that shined some light on my search.

“It’s sadness to me that we seldom share our deepest religious experiences, our true religious beliefs with others…Is there a greater joy than a good meal with a friend and talk of things that matter, to tell and retell the sweetest of tales?”  This really spoke to me because that is exactly what we did in our times together in the McLaren’s living room on Monday nights.  We sang songs, shared what God was doing in our lives, shared Scriptures with one another, and prayed for one another.  We celebrated holidays together, meals together, and time together.  We came to know one another on a very real and deep level.  Most important, God was in all of our conversations and in our communion with one another. These conversations, this communion, and the companionship we felt for one another resulted in a true conversion of who we were, with each other and with God. We shared our thoughts and feelings with one another and having God in our midst in all of it created a spiritual fellowship and bond with one another; a bond that I still feel even though time and space have moved me far away from any of these people.  It was and remains to be a very significant and real experience for me, one that I feel very blessed to have been apart of.  It makes me think of the scripture in Malachi 3:16, 17.

          “Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another.  The Lord

           paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was

           written before Him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed His

           name.  They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I

           make up my treasured possession.”