The dynamic of “come and see” was captured almost perfectly by the YG alumni who gathered for our recent mission trip to San Miguel Milpas Altas in Guatemala. I want to read you an excerpt from a hand written note one of our mission fish pushed into my hand late one night, half-way through our trip, literally on the eve of Epiphany. They are anonymous sentiments, but they could have been offered by almost anyone on the trip:
“After last night’s worship service the loneliness of my journey faded for the first time in a long time. After my freshman year of college, an ever-present void started to become more apparent. By my sophomore year I think I reached the lowest point of my life as I spent most of the year depressed and confused, trying to fight between “the standard college experience” and what I really wanted out of life proved overwhelmingly difficult, especially when I wasn’t even 100% on what that was. The struggle became extra difficult and still is as I could no longer relate to my best friends on many levels.
They were YG alums ranging in age from 19 to 26. They were diverse in age, career, and mile marker on their faith journeys, but in some mysterious way they were united, for they had each sensed a lack, a need, a hunger for God in their life. And so they came, they came hoping they would see.///And what did they see? They saw a thousand sweat shop workers pouring out of their jobs and into evening worship. They saw themselves swarmed with welcoming hugs from a crowd that could not speak their language and only knew they were fellow Christians there to serve. They saw rawboned villagers crying and collapsing in their arms with gratitude for the beauty of the new church God had built for them. They saw themselves surrounded by a hundred Guatemalans surging forward to the altar to proclaim their renewed faith. And then they saw themselves. Your children. Young people caught up in all the doubts and ambiguities of their age. Young people who nevertheless now saw themselves standing, now walking, now surging to join the crowd at the altar. They saw their work-weary arms raised, they felt their sun-burned eyes tearing, they heard their hoarse voices proclaiming their love of God. They didn’t come to the altar because of an argument, they didn’t come because of a proof, and they most certainly didn’t come because it was cool. They came because they saw. They saw the living God warming their hearts again the way he had in YG. The way he had in Galilee. The way he always does when his children turn and come. God’s gift of epiphany. Come and see.