We boarded the riverboat around 9:30, and by 10 she was full. Our Bridge community comprised only about half of the total on the boat, and this allows an interesting amalgam of 2 contrasting emotions to hold hands and enjoy each other, despite their obvious differences. 

On the one hand, new faces and hearts brings me into a fairly anxious space, where I feel the familiar fear of, “what if I’m terrible?” Or if I’m not terrible, “what if they hate me anyway?” This sounds self-absorbed and probably is, but it’s also a desire to introduce someone new to the God who rescued me, who gave me life (generally, capital L Life, and also specifically, this beautiful life of mine.) The baggage that comes with that is, fair or not, that someone new could possibly mistake me for God and the Bridge for The Church – I know that makes me seem like I have a complex, the biggest delusion of grandeur EVER, but how many of us or those we know have walked away from church or God because of something a Christian did, or didn’t do? What if the person sitting next to you in church was the person you saw be rude to the server at the table next to yours last night? What if the pastor said something dumb on his blog, or in an off-handed comment at a youth baseball game? What if 2 women on the church board dropped off offering envelopes at your house because you hadn’t attended in several weeks? What if the drummer on the worship team has an addiction? Now it’s not so far-fetched, right? 

So that can be heavy if I think about it too long, but the opportunity to point to the actual Living God who loves you now, has always loved you, no matter who you were/are, who you think you are, what you’ve done, how far you think you are from Him, is so fantastically exhilarating, it’s why I get out of bed and onto a riverboat in the first place.   

It’s a swirl of emotion, and is compounded by the fact that many of the new faces were Muslims there for the Eid al-Adha gathering. What will they think of me, of us, in our shorts and sunglasses? So many questions, will they think us disrespectful of Our Jesus? Will they find our worship not, um, well…not enough? The truth is, it doesn’t actually matter, our worship is for only One, we do not do anything for, as it says in the Bible, the praises of man. But again, we would like to not be off-putting and a reason (irrational though it may be) to turn away.

Here’s another question: How many Muslim services have we been to? How many would we attend? What about the open hearted spirits of those who joined us, though they may have been taught our separate faiths, our separate cultures, our separate lifestyles, could not under any circumstances coexist, and certainly not for something so trivial as a free boat ride?

Yet they did, and as I began, I wondered how they would receive my message…

I wrote the message years ago – with the changes it required. (I once heard that we never read the same book twice, and I find that true of most everything. The book might not change, but we do. So, I could look at a message I wrote last Tuesday and be affected by something entirely different today. All the more when we speak of months and years instead of days and weeks.) I often use the Old Testament as a jumping off point, and did here as well, discussing the story of Mephibosheth. It’s a wonderful illustration of grace; Mephibosheth didn’t do anything to deserve it, but was invited to sit and eat at the table of the King forever. 

But beginning with the Old Testament allowed those of us with different faiths some common ground, like an open door to a deeper universal conversation. I wrestled with this topic for some weeks, even as I worked to prepare the concepts, and was immediately thankful the book of 2nd Samuel and Mephibosheth won. Often, I find if we can stop being “us” and “them,” or generalizations, labels and sound bites, we’ll usually find similarities (like bosses and kids and car trouble and back pain and promotions and Morrissey and the Avengers and how lovely my wife is) and if we can find similarities, we’ll start to like, then maybe even care about and ultimately love each other. This is often surprising, but it shouldn’t be, we’ve all been created by the same God, in His image. Sometimes, though, it takes a free ride on a riverboat to see it.

I’ve promise the next post will be about food, including the Best Chicken I’ve Ever Had. But one more thing on the impact of our shared humanity on that boat: As one man (very near my age, holding his child while his wife held another) left the boat, he purposefully turned, found me, and said, “Shukran.” I had no idea what that meant and, since we had shared such a sacred space together, had no interest in doing what we usually do and nod and pretend to understand, so I asked, “What does that mean?” 

Of course, it means “Thank you.”