Hanging on the Lawn, Munching the Words of Jesus

Last night at 8:00pm, we hosted our first Large Group meeting of the semester. However, in all honesty, last night at 7:30pm  I suspected it was going to be an epic failure - oh me of little faith! Here was my reasoning:

• Strike One - Our room reservation, which we'd so diligently submitted over the summer, was denied for that night, and that night only, leaving us with no room to meet in.
• Strike Two - We'd already distributed hundreds of fliers and hung up dozens of posters inviting people to join us the afore-mentioned room.
• Strike Three - I discovered that our meeting was scheduled for the very same time-slot as the nationally renowned, often-televised comedian performing in the next building over.

So there I was, half an hour before our very first public event of the year, with no location, no plan, and no clue.

How did God turn it around, you may ask?

Several days ago, I was reading a sermon by A.W. Tozer, in which he discussed St. Matthew's account of the feeding of the 5,000. The situation was such that thousands of people were surrounding Jesus and his disciples, it was dinner time, and the people were hungry. With only a few fish and a few bits of bread, there was no way that Jesus and his friends could feed the crowd. And yet, Jesus commanded the people to sit down on "the green grass," and his disciples to distribute the meager rations to them.

Tozer reflects that part of our calling as the church is to provide "green grass" kinds of places, where people can sit and be fed by Jesus. In fact, there's very little else we can provide - all we have are a few fish, a few bits of bread, and our Jesus.

As I was sitting dejected in front of the Student Union last night, God brought Tozer's reflection to mind - we had so little to offer that night. All the plans we'd made were falling through, but sometimes Jesus doesn't need our carefully orchestrated plans in order to sit some people down and feed them. All we needed to do was find a patch of grass for them to sit on... Jesus would handle the rest.

And so 8:00 found us hanging out on the lawn by the Student Union building, literally sitting on "the green grass," while I simply shared our community's vision for our campus. They sat, freshmen and seniors; transfer students and commuters; engineers and artists; believers and skeptics; the needy, the pharisaic, and the enthusiastic.

It wasn't the plan we'd envisioned for our "Introduction to InterVarsity Extravaganza," but God used the circumstances to bring about an evening that won't soon be forgotten, and an invitation to rely on and partner with him as he calls his far-flung children at York to come home to him.

Hallelujah!