Quaking in the Presence of the Lord
Seeking Out the Manna.
Sunday was rainy, the sky grey-scaled. I had spent my morning running food delivery orders - trying to make some extra cash on the weekends (an activity not unfamiliar to those in graduate school). But now I traveling across town through the rain and traffic, not to deliver food but to be fed myself with the manna that comes from the Lord. I had pulled up to a small church, several decades old. I later was told it use to be the home of a Methodist congregation generations ago. But now a days it serves a small meeting place for the local Religious Society of Friends - also known as the Quakers.
Quakers worship is, to be honest, rather strange from an outside perspective. The inside of the church was bare, only a few homemade quilts hung on the wall as decoration. The pews were arranged in a square formation, all facing the center of the room. In the center of the room was a circle of chairs, where anyone could come up and take a seat. The first 40 minutes of worship is mostly silent. No speaking, no hymns, no preaching. You see Quakers traditionally believe that everyone has the light of Christ within them, and that those who believe in Christ and are baptized in the Holy Spirit can discern that light - to commune with it and let it guide them.
So Quaker worship is about spending time with God in silence, allowing the Holy Spirit to fill you and guide you. And when one feels called by the Holy Spirit, they speak aloud to the group and share the message (be it a statement, a scripture reading, a hymn, etc). Now not all modern Quakers have a Christian-focused perspective (and I will be honest, this fact made me nervous to visit a Quaker worship service). But one of my goals during my PhD program is to take on new adventures and experiences so I can learn and grow - so I pushed past my worry and stepped into the unknown.
The modern world lacks silence. We have a constant presence of noise - TV, youtube, tiktok. Constant news feeds of politics, salacious drama, and discourse regarding every possible topic humans can ponder. I struggle with silence. I am always working on something, reading, watching/listening. I struggled at first during the worship service - my mind and body where uncomfortable. But as the seconds turned to minutes, I allowed myself to embrace it. I emptied my mind of the concerns of the world - of my work, my needs, my desires - and allowed myself to be filled with only the concerns of God.
I did allow myself a bible to read from. But unlike other church services I have attended, there was no set reading plan or topic. It was just me and the scripture, being guided to wherever the Holy Spirit led me. The following is my experience and what I learned from this process, as best as I can recollect.
Led by the Holy Spirit.
I first felt pulled to psalm one. I read through the scripture multiple times, and this is what stood out to me:
whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction
There are two paths - one that leads to the Glory of God, and the other that leads to destruction. How do we know what path we are on? We meditate on the law of God. And I will be honest, I had been neglecting the law of God and Christian living for awhile now. I have been struggling with sin and spiritual confusion.
So I turned to Sermon on the Mount - specifically the opening half, where Jesus expands upon the concepts of the law. And after the beatitudes, we see the message of psalm one re-enforced by Christ:
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
A call to action is being made here - that we must discern how we live and act in according to God's will. That meditating on the law is not just to have knowledge, but for this knowledge to transform us. And Christ outlines this transformation with several examples: murder, lust, oaths, and love. If one should not kill another person, then one should not insult and degrade them. If one should not sleep with a woman he is not married to, he should not think about desiring her. One should not lie, and so one should not make promises one knows they cannot keep. One should love their neighbor, but God loves all - so in turn one should love their enemy as well.
This last transformation was a point of discussion after the silent worship. When Quaker meetings end, the group tends to spend a few minutes to discuss their experience and thoughts with each other. And many people at the meeting, to my surprise, said they had been thinking about how to love their enemy. About what it means to love their neighbor - who is our neighbor, how should love them, how should we love different kinds of neighbors?
A major idea brought up during this conversation was the idea of love as action not just feeling. Again, we look at the example of Jesus in the gospels: everything He does is out of love for others. He heals people. He teaches to the crowds. He drives out the money changers from the temple. In some of these examples He is kind, in others He is harsh and even angry. But all of this is love. For it is love because He is giving people what they need when they need it. To the sick he gives healing, to the sinful he gives teaching, to those who insult his Father's house? He stops them! And by giving people what they need, He spiritually transforms them (something that He continues to do this very day!).
So when we say love our neighbor or we love our enemy, what we are not saying is to be vaguely kind to everyone and to avoid uncomfortable conversations and compromise Truth in the face of evil. What we are saying is to give people what they need, so that they can be transformed by the light of Christ (even if they hate that light). To let our actions be guided by the Holy Spirit - to let our hands no longer be our hands but to be the hands of the Lord. To be a guide out of the darkness of sin, and into the light of the Kingdom. This is the path that mediating on the law brings us to.
Other notes.
I felt the presence of God during the worship. Outside of what I have written here, I reflected much on my life and my sin. Where I need to focus and improve upon. How I have fallen short of the glory. I was nearly brought tears by it - and in the small quiet church I began to pray and repent. Repent of my sins, of my negligence towards God, my neighbors, and myself. I genuinely prayed for the first time in months - not worried about what I was supposed to do or what is correct, but out of genuine devotion to the Lord. It was beautiful.
I will be honest: not everyone at the meeting shared the same perspectives as myself. But this did not hinder our conversation and learning - we brought our differences to the table and worked through them rather then pretend that they did not exist for the sake of appearing to be uniform (something that occurs too often in many churches). The format of the meeting allowed people to be genuine and honest with each other, something that feels rare in church these days.
There are some other churches that I plan on attending and experiencing, but I do plan on returning to the meeting of Friends soon - to experience the silent awe of being in the presence of God. Despite the rain on Sunday, I saw the Light.