Jesus Doesn’t Live at Church

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, my family and I were in the process of looking for a new church. We had attended the same church for over a decade and had slowly found ourselves ready to explore something different. Then the Coronavirus hit and the temporary closure of churches derailed us from seeking out something new.

Many churches quickly shifted into online services. A safe option to keep people connected to the church in a time where we couldn’t physically be together. Despite it being almost impossible to really feel a church out from our living room and my kids being bored to tears, I told myself it was important that we stick to it. We tried out a few different churches this way.

Until one day early into the pandemic, I realized something.

Jesus doesn’t live at church service.

This occurred to me one evening as we sat down to eat dinner as a family. Something we suddenly had time to do when the world stopped. My son said Grace and we were going around the table talking about our highs and lows from the day. Pre-pandemic, these moments only happened on random nights where we were not dividing and conquering to get the kids to an extra-curricular activity.

I got this rush of emotions as I was sitting there looking at my family, laughing about the weirdness that daily life had become and listening to the real struggles we were each experiencing. This, I thought; this is where Jesus was. He was with us right there at our dining table. Feeling our emotions, our struggles, our laughter.

Right then I realized I didn’t need to be forcing us to tune into some random on-line church service in order to check some box that didn’t actually exist. Jesus was not standing by my tv or computer each Sunday with a clip board.

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man (Acts 17:24)

My family and I will find a new church and return to in-person services sometime in the near future. I miss the community it brings to our lives. I miss feeling that presence of Jesus while in a church setting. But I also know this year has been unlike any other and I have not been without His presence simply because I didn’t regularly tune in on-line. I tuned into my family, into being grateful for our health when many others were experiencing great pain, our togetherness. With that, His presence is all around us.