A Taste of Heaven

      My least favorite part of the church service is the time when the pastor says, "Now stand up and greet someone you don't know." I know I should be happy to make small talk with the people around me for a few minutes, but it sometimes takes a major effort to smile, introduce myself, and ask the same questions to different people each week. This morning, I kind of chickened out and just watched as Drew made his way over to his friend Hakim (or Akim . . . I'm not really sure). Hakim is from Kenya, and he and Drew share a love of basketball and McDonald's. Another teenagerish boy joined them. As the boys talked, a woman who seemed to be about my age, dressed from top to toe in beautiful native African garb, came over to them, bumped fists, and joined the conversation. I thought, as I do almost every Sunday, how much fun it is to be in a church where multinational interaction like this is routine (even if I don't always join the interaction as I should).
      Revelation Chapter 7 gives a picture of heaven that reads, in part: "After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the Lamb." If one way to describe heaven is multicultural, then Crossroads Church in Ferney-Voltaire must be a little taste of heaven. Ireland, England, Australia, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Portugal, Brazil, Germany, Sweden, Holland, United States, Papua New Guinea, Zimbabwe, new Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Japan, China, South Korea, Czech Republic, Nigeria, Ethiopia . . . . Oh yeah -- France and Switzerland, too. All those nations, tribes, peoples, and languages come together every week. When someone prays for a drought, famine, financial crisis, or government in another part of the world, you can bet they know exactly what they are talking to God about. It makes to world seem more real. It makes God's work in the world seem more real to hear from those who have seen it.
       Worshipping with people from across the globe also makes the world seem smaller. Before we moved to Switzerland, I didn't really expect our family to ever take a European vacation. My parents talking about going to Israel seemed absurd. A trip to Paris seemed indulgent. A trip to Kenya seemed impossible. Those places weren't even real to me. Now, though, I have met people from those places.(Give me a break; I do usually participate in the greeting time.) Paris is real because that's where Steven lives. Kenya is real because Hakim's family is there. Traveling seems less scary, more possible, more sane, when I see that God's people are spread over the earth.
       While thinking about the multiethnic, muticultural, multilingual, multinational nature of God's kingdom is awe-inspiring, what's really fun is Sunday mornings, when all the "multis" sing together, when I play in the nursery with children who don't speak my language, when no two people talking to the church have the same accents, and when a mom in a kanga fist bumps with my son.