An Aspect of Small Groups: A Place Where More is Caught Than Taught | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: An Aspect of Small Groups: A Place Where More is Caught Than Taught | Previous Challenge Entry
By E Lopez
12/01/07
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When I first walked into the small group, I was unsure if it was the right place for me. The living room was small, and the five people, including my self, who were there, filled the room to its capacity. Everyone in the group was friendly and outwardly clean. However, there cleanness, I determined was not from a shower or clean clothes, but more from their inside. I quite couldn’t put my finger on it. At times I would doubt there nice smiles and wondered if it was all a show. They had a strange glow which was something that attracted me to them in the first place. I knew that if they were genuine, it’s what I wanted, a sincere personality. They cared for one another and spoke to each with such a respectful tone, I truly felt out of place, but I did not want to leave their company and no one told me that I wasn’t welcomed. On the contrary, I felt accepted and sincerely welcomed, but still I couldn’t stop wondering if they were real in their treatment with each other and to me. Man, did I feel so out of place. I heard the leader of the group give a Bible study, and I was impacted by his devotion to what he spoke about, but I still could not get pass their sincere peaceful demeanor. It was a complete contrast to where I used be: loud music, the smell of cigarette smoke and alcoholic beverages, arguments among so-called friends, distrust, disrespect, I was always on the borderline of paranoia because of the old cliché that it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. I was tired of it, and I was looking for truth. “If these people are real,” I said to my self with hope, “I want to know what gives them that inner calmness, and sincere friendship.”

After the lecture, it was time for fellowship, a new word for me, but I became a quick learner of what it meant. I asked a believer if they were always like this, “like what?” he replied.

“Friendly and sincere,” I replied.

“We truly love the Lord which allows us to love one another, because we know that the world is a cold and a lonely place. We can overlook our faults and see that each person in this room has been ransomed for a high price,” he said.

“I want to know more about this ransom and high price,” I asked, “because if your Lord has this much influence and can bring you to this kind of level of love for one another, then I think I need that too,” I said. If he only new how much I needed a sincere friend right then.

“We’ll keep having meetings and you keep coming and you’ll meet our Lord soon enough to experience his everlasting love. In the meantime here’s my number and call me, if you need to talk,” he said.

As I drove home from my first Bible study, I was taken-back by the idea that “I” attended a religious meeting, and I became concerned that I would become one of “them”, but upon opening the door to my home, I was greeted with the reality that my life was stale and superficial. I lacked substance as a person. I needed to become one of them.

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