Becoming a Family

“Time is too precious for lingering, we claim. Indeed, time is precious. But that is not why we have stopped lingering, for lingering is a good way to spend precious time…

-Ajith Fernando, Reclaiming Friendship

If you’d asked me in undergrad where I was going after Friday night Bible Study, I would have said either going to bed or reading a book. As a student with a packed schedule, getting time alone was always a premium value. This year though, as a new grad on a church plant, I learned the value of simply spending time – without agenda or tasks to complete – with people. The main way I experienced this value was through Joe and Irene (former leads for the Boston University ministry team, now serving at Irvine) and the other mentors on the BU team. Though our team was a hodge-podge of people and many of us were new to one another just a few months ago, we became family. 

A Sacred Space

When you regularly gather together with a group of people, the four walls in which you meet become more than the sum of its parts. The laughter, the stories, and the memories you share there create a kind of sacred space, a physical place where the ideals of the Acts 2 church become concrete. For me, one of those places was Joe and Irene’s living room.

As a team, we loved to linger there even once all of our tasks were completed and the next week was planned. Those moments became precious to me: when the Korean tables came out and we all gathered around, sharing Haagen-Dazs ice cream or OneZo grapefruit slushes. As winter settled in over Boston, we’d finish the night around their fireplace, singing and telling the funniest stories. We joked that whenever we left their home, we smelled like we’d been at a campfire. On that humid July day when we first moved the Hwangs into their apartment, it seemed like any old apartment. But as we packed it up eight months later to send them back to Irvine, I was struck by how every corner of that apartment evoked a sense of home, a sense of belonging and family. Had it not been for those sacred moments, these corners would have been just another space to dust and empty. 

Lucky Beyond Desert

Coming to Boston as a CPI from our North Carolina church, I had very little relational history with my teammates or new mentors. I worried that my experience of fellowship in North Carolina was exceptional, a function of spending four years with the same people and going through the formative years of undergrad together. In those lingering moments at Joe and Irene’s house, though, I witnessed first-hand the community-creating power of the gospel. Because our motley crew had made this commitment to leave familiar people and places, to open up our lives to one another, and to give our all to share the gospel, our lives were filled to the brim with joy. Sometimes during those lingering moments, singing old praise songs or laughing at the antics of Joe and Irene’s kids, I would become self-aware. I would remember the college sophomore who would scurry back to her dorm, hoping no one invited her to stay for board games after Bible Study; my life felt small back then, and I used to wonder what was missing. Those moments in the Hwangs’ living room were moments where I could tangibly say “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the [woman] who takes refuge in Him,” (Psalms 34:8). Entrusting my life to Jesus, confessing my sinfulness and recognizing his rightful place as Lord of my life as a junior in college has led to this cascading effect of increasing joy, expanding relational warmth, and a deepening sense of purpose.

In the nights leading up to the Hwangs’ departure for Irvine, many of us gathered in their living room, savoring those last moments of in-person fellowship. The predominant emotion in the room was not sadness, though; those nights were characterized by deep gratitude. Like C.S. Lewis wrote, who could have deserved this? Many of us were strangers to one another less than one year ago, yet we have been lucky beyond desert to experience the golden sessions of life together.