In 2011, a small group of east African refugees came to our pastors at Timothy Lutheran Church in St. Louis and asked if the church had a space where they could hold their own worship. For some time they had been meeting in each other’s homes to worship. But more and more refugees were joining them, and it was becoming impractical for them to meet this way. Timothy Lutheran graciously gave this group a room where they could gather for their own church service each Sunday.
Recently, the now-larger east African congregation poured into the sanctuary at Timothy Lutheran at the beginning of Timothy’s morning worship. Some of the men wore suits. The women dazzled in colorful print dresses and big and brilliant head scarves.
They had filed into our sanctuary to say thank you.
Our church had met their needs at an unsettling time when they were foreigners trying hard to cling to their traditional rituals of faith. Our church opened its arms to them, said yes when they asked for a space to worship, and said yes again when they asked for a bigger space to worship.
Now, they didn’t need that space anymore. Their congregation had purchased a building on the north side of the city, a space they could truly call their own. Easter Sunday would be their first worship in that new space.
The congregation’s leader showered our congregation with praise. I imagined him, so far away from the place where he grew up and the land he knew, growing used to this new and unfamiliar place called the United States of America. Did he still have family back in Africa? Had he ever been gripped by loneliness here? Confusion? Fear?
He called his worship team to come to the front of the sanctuary. Thirteen men and women, young and old, met the leader in front of the altar. One young boy wearing a Chicago Bulls t-shirt carried a keyboard. And thirteen voices filled our church sanctuary with music that was so loud and beautiful, my heart started pounding.
They sang in Swahili. They lifted their hands. They swayed and they smiled and they sang their hearts out. Nothing held them back. I don’t know the words to the songs they sang. But I do know that excitement and joy for God was clear, and it was contagious.
Joy and excitement need no language.
In two weeks, the second- and fourth-year seminary families will receive their calls: the second-year seminarians for their vicarage (similar to a year-long internship) and the fourth-year seminarians to their first church as pastors. It is a time of tremendous anticipation around the Seminary campus. These families can be placed anywhere in the country. Most of them will be packing up their entire households, pulling up roots in a familiar community and going to another yet-unknown place to bloom. Kelsey Fink, the wife of a second-year Seminary student, reflects on that sense of anticipation beautifully in this blog post.
To be clear, we as seminary families are no refugees in the sense that the members of the East African congregation are. But like the East Africans, we are wanderers. And as the wife of a second-year Seminarian, I will hold with me on Call Day that universal joy and excitement that the refugees who stood at the front of our sanctuary so graciously shared.
In a broad sense, we are all wanderers. You know that saying, “The only constant is change.”
To that I add: The most important constant is God’s unfailing love for us. Armed with that love, we, like the East Africans, will bloom where we’re planted.
meadowsbygrace 