Wednesdays, a tribe of women gather. A cold café on dark winter nights unhurriedly percolates with a steady trickle of women. Lights flicker on and love pours into styrofoam cups…hot, steaming coffee flows with bold grace from broken vessels.
We bring curiosity and questions…
many, many questions.
We bring doubts and fears, laughter and pain,
pasts and presents, loves and losses.
One by one, we wrap ourselves around an altar of thrift-store tables muscled together in a broken town, our weary walks trussed by threads of hope. Can you relate?
Holy Spirit we invite You.
We are a puzzle that doesn’t quite fit. Jesus fills in the gaps. Young and not, from corporate and non-profit careers, homemakers, fast-food workers, supermarket checkers, counseling professionals, government employees, healthcare workers, teachers, unemployed and retired…
multi-colors, single and married, rich and poor, strong and weak, happy and sad…
we gather in poverty.
Some of us, we come with fullness: of closets and bellies and bank accounts.
Some of us, we come with emptiness: of housing and paychecks and love.
Each of us: we gather in hunger.
Holy Spirit, we invite You.
Weekly…ready or not, rich and poor, in joy and brokenness, Jesus peers into the poverty of our lives offering lavish grace.
Because that’s the kind of place it is…a cold café on dark winter nights in a broken town hemmed in bridges of Hope. Streams of Living Water overflow the riverbanks in a community divided by internal and external poverty. We receive mercy and find grace as God’s Word fills our hearts and lives.
Extravagance converges on poverty. Every Wednesday. It’s all grace.
I encourage you to seek out a community of people who will accept you as you are, and love you so much they won’t leave you where you are. Gather in poverty, and watch what happens.