I’ve just spent a week in a seminary worship intensive and today we did the Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday Vigil services back to back over a marathon 6 hours, and then debriefed. And yes, we did the whole vigil — and then some.
Well, that is not how one usually does these services (generally, the remembrance of Christ’s self-offering takes place over three days), and I am both spiritually filled up and totally blitzed. But that is not what happened too fast. I guess what you could say is that the fellowship is over too fast. We arrive here and reconnect in deep love and fellowship from all over the country, we live intensely together for a week, we do all this awesome worship, we picnic and go out to eat and drink coffee at Dunn Brothers, and tomorrow we get into cars and planes and it’s done.
And yet the fellowship doesn’t end. Only the residential piece is really done. Thank God for the prayers and the ‘net and the phone that somehow sustain the ties that bind.
It’s time to pack and sleep , but as I sit and look out the window one more time at the brightly lit Minneapolis skyline, I know I have been blessed here, deeply blessed, despite how tightly crammed the week has been.
from pen and paintbrush 
You’re so right! These classes, thus the fellowship, ends way too soon. Or does it? That’s one advantage of media-the fellowship, friendship, love, and learning can continue, even while we’re apart. I think it’s amazing how God brings us together in so many ways. Many of them are so surprising. But that’s one thing I love about God-His surprising and awesome ways of loving us and helping us come together, even when we’re so far apart.
Amen. Chris. Amen. There is indeed a bond, a tie, a connection, that cannot be replicated than what happens when we gather for intensives twice a year. We know it and so do those who witness our reunions. And indeed it is this cloistering experience that binds us together, but we also know that being wired with one another is what strengthens that bond – as you say – prayer, net and the phone. We are connected in many ways – no way is the only way, but together they help us to be the community we are. Hope you made it home okay. Already miss cohort 2! It’s indeed not the same…..
Too fast is right. It was a whirlwind of love, sharing, worship, kinship, blessings, joys and tears. I am always renewed by our time at Seminary, it is bittersweet at the departure, with wanting to stay in this God moment, and yet also yearning to be back home with my family and friends as well. My prayer is that some of the joy and blessing flow over into my life with my family and friends once I get back home, to God’s Glory.
You are right on Chris, the time together is awsome and life giving – but going home to family is good also. The amazing thing with all of this technology is that our connectedness continues when we are apart. Since I am new to Facebook I am still learning the ettiquite but I have been able to keep up with people and even engage in some dialouge. The last two weeks I have spent three days a week at Seminary for Confessions class and it is different without the cohort, there are still great connections – but it is different.