emilyispegeln

In case you fail to notice, this will all be written in English. Why? Because I write better in English than in Swedish? No, it should be quite obvious that that's not the case. It's simply because the very reason for starting this blog ages ago was to communicate with the people I left behind in Sweden when I moved to China. Swedish people. Later on, it was to communicate to the very same people (with a few more added) but now from Australia. And what about now? Now I live in Sweden, and instead I have friends all over the world that keep asking me to update something. Something that they will quite obviously not understand if it's written in my mother tounge (Romanian - no, just kidding, I'm illiterate when it comes to Romanian). My point is; if you're disappointed in the way I changed my writing - tell me. If I make annoying grammar mistakes - tell me. I'll do my best, but it won't feel as natural to write as it does in Swedish. In fact, I might revert back to my own language at some point in time. But not at the moment. And I'll promise to do my very best.

Now I've gathered tons of stories since I came back home from my DTS and I'm not sure in what order to tell them. I'm not sure what pictures to show and I don't know how to go on with telling people about life here, back home in the North. So I thought I might begin with a place were all these things began; church.

Church is not exclusive for a chosen elite group. It is not for people who have a secret calling, a higher rank in society. That would defeat the whole purpose of church. In the same way, church is not a place for like-minded people to gather, with the same behaviour pattern, the same opinions. The church is not for perfect people and it's not for those that place their own individual well-being over others.

Standing in church on a Sunday afternoon, my boots dripping from the melting snow, I catch glimpses of all those faces. I notice that many of us have nothing in common. We don't share the same style of dressing, we don't enjoy the same kind of music and we socialize with very different people.
Now you would probably expect me to say something in the terms of "But the love of Jesus is what brings us together!". And of course, it is. But it can also be very untrue. If church was nothing but a place for Jesus-lovers to meet with other Jesus-lovers, we would never learn anything. If we came merely to perform our duty as Christians, to meet every Sunday morning or afternoon, and then to go off again as if we didn't actually need each other, as if we had no other purpose of meeting than to simply count the numbers, then I can't see much point in church.
What I find so beautiful about church is that none of us is the same. Many of us would never meet in any other context, would probably not even pick up a conversation. But inside these walls with horrible acoustics and the smell of coffee lingering in the air, we gather and we share stories. Everyone is reaching out and everyone is being reached. Even people who never heard of Jesus before.
The worship music plays and we all sing the same songs, but slightly different. It's the same song, but some people go low, some high. Some (like myself) have no clue of how to sing in the key the band plays in, others go all in and wail their lungs out. And then it's like the music dies and I start to see peoples stories written on their backs.
In the far right corner, there's a girl with a whisper of a bruise on her left cheek. There's the old woman, fists clenched and eyebrows frowning. Up front, someone is holding back tears because he knows his wife will be gone by the time he gets back. A young woman pulls back her golden hair, smiling because of the text message she got last night. Someone else is panicking about an assignment he can't possibly finish before tonight; someone else is focusing on breathing in and out, happy that the lungs are still working. And elderly man skips across the floor and can't himself from stealing a few dancesteps from a time when television was still in black and white. Someone is thinking about how the vegan burger they made is gonna taste like and someone else is thinking about how they're gonna make the money in the bank account last long enough to make dinner this week.
I don't know any of these stories for sure, I'm just making guesses. Most of them are wrong. The only story I can be sure about is my own.

Now I'm supposed to make this into some sort of excellent well-thought out conclusion. But I don't have one. The only thing I know is what I saw. I saw people, people vastly different from each other, coming together. Smiling, crying, praying, swearing, laughing, singing, sharing. I saw them facing God and still being a unique part of a grand symphony. I don't know how to describe it in any other way than this. But it was beautiful. As people are.