Living Like We're Sitting at Altars.

I used to write a lot about altars. I used to write that Love sits and waits at altars with arms open and ready to receive the broken. I still believe that—that Love sits there, waiting. I feel her embrace when my own knees hit the floor.This past week I went to camp with some high school students and there were altars laid out at the front of the room. I watched students get up from their seats and go down to kneel and pray, and I couldn’t help but tear up at the sight of their boldness. I kept thinking about what a vulnerable thing it was, to go kneel at an altar, to let Love receive you.They could have chosen to pray in their seats quietly—God would have heard them all the same. But instead, they chose to take on the posture of humility. They made a movement of surrender, having to physically get up out of their chairs and walk to the front of the room, past everyone, to where they would make themselves small on the ground with heads bowed and eyes closed. These teenagers, some whom have spent all their high school years hiding behind thick walls built by the fear of being known, finally let themselves be seen.What a privilege it was, to be a witness to piles of praying high school students. I watched the number of kneeling knees grow as their fellow classmates would come and lay their hands on the brave—maybe for the first time in a long time, maybe for the first time ever. There were arms draped across shoulders and backs, tears shed out in the open, prayers being whispered in the quiet of transitions, songs being sung over one another, and room being made for anyone else who needed to come and join in.I tapped the shoulder of the other chaperone standing in front of me, pointed to where Love was leaving her mark on their young lives, and said, “

I think this is one of the most beautiful sights I will ever see in this life, the children of God loving one another right.”

But why do we wait for alters? Why do we wait for peoples' knees to hit the floor before we partner with Love and do what we were made for? That’s what I wanted to say in the aftermath to those students, to myself.

When the prayers lead to amen and the whispers turn to noise, what kind of people will we be? Will we return to our seats and never look back? Will we look Love in the eye as we walk away and fail to see the reflection of all those who have shown up for us in our own lives? Will we live greedy for the presence of Love, with arms crossed and closed off, never giving it back? Or will we live like Love?

I believe that Love sits and waits at alters with arms open and ready to receive the broken—but I don’t think she stays there. Not for a second.

And I don’t think we are supposed to either. 

Because Love follows us back to our seats, our homes, our jobs, our schools. Love makes it her mission to settle into every crack and crevasse of our lives, beckoning us to speak with the same vulnerability and bravery that those altars have come to know. Love promises to remember, to follow us into the mundane, to show up even when it’s inconvenient and hard, to give away her life for His cause.I want to learn how to do the same, to follow her lead.

Because there won’t always be altars to cue us in on when it’s time to love people harder, to pray a little louder, ask the hard questions and sit in the answers that follow.

So we have to start living like we’re sitting at those altars all the time

—that’s what Love is. If we aren’t loving people in the before and after of kneeling knees, if we aren’t willing to reach into lives long before the need can be seen, if we aren’t people who are walking with each other through the trials and tribulations even after our prayers meet amen, I would ask us, 

are we really living like Love at all? 

words by Jacqueline Winstead and photo by Sarah Mohan