Pilgrims, Seinfeld & the Office, and Reflecting on my Last Large Group

Tonight, for the last time, I'll join a couple hundred college students for InterVarsity's weekly large group.

I've been going to large groups on Thursday nights for the past 18 years--four as a student, fourteen as a campus staff. In the process I missed out on Seinfeld, Friends, The Office and much else that has defined Thursday evenings for most other 36 year olds that I know--I think I've caught about two episodes each.

But in lieu of sharing tv experiences with America, I have been a part of God-moments. Certainly not every week. But plenty more than I can count. And tonight's my last chance to do that with a group of students that I can in some sense call "mine."

This morning as I felt the weight of tonight's last large group, God was good to have me in 1 Peter 1. In his opening, Peter refers to the churches he's writing as "strangers in the world." What he means is pilgrims, aliens, people who are in a sense disconnected from their exact context.

There's a call for people who follow Jesus to fiercely love this world while at the same time recognizing transience--our own and the transience of the way the world is currently. This world is not our home--at least, not yet. One day it will be.

But we are not to become overly-attached to the Land of the Ruins. We are pilgrims--moving, looking, waiting, longing for something more.

Tonight's large group reminds me that part of my work in following Christ is to love recklessly but not fix myself anywhere that is not home. Home is coming. In the mean time, I am to serve and love and work and play and rest and laugh. But I must keep moving towards home.

Some day, there will be no more good-byes. Some day, we will be in a permanent place. A place we can honestly and finally call home. I think that the military-kid in me longs for that with a particular ache.

In the mean time, we must live here as pilgrims. And we look ahead to the day when He makes all things new. Come, Lord Jesus.

After tonight I'll have my Thursday nights back. Maybe I'll join the world of Thursday night t.v. Maybe I'll just read a book.

All I know is that I wouldn't trade-out my last fourteen years of Thursday nights with students for anything else...and that as a pilgrim following Jesus, he has called me to leave what those Thursday nights have represented (campus and student work) for a new work that will have different costs, different blessings.

And my work, at the bottom of all of it, is to trust him.