Tonight Small Group/House Church was done New Testament-style. If you want to know what that means, check out the post called An Old Idea for a New Small Group. We had a communion station, hand-washing station, prayer station, and Scripture-reading station. The room was dimly lit, with candles spaced out, and incense burning. The Spirit hit a lot of people hard. Some read Scriptures; others talked about things on their minds; lots of prayer before God, and some cool worship with the use of 412's official CD-Player (thanks Jeff). One or two were on the verge of tears. Compassion swept over. I for one felt the presence of God, the Spirit talking to my soul; others felt this way, also.

Though I try to keep compassion, it is sometimes hard. I have a tendency to be easily angered (and a lot of times this anger ends up being bottled-up within me, to explode every once in a while), I felt myself slightly angry at those who walked in saying, "This is stupid, this is dumb, this is worthless, I'm wasting my time," and tried to sleep while everything was going on. It kind of dampered everyone else's senses to experiencing God, creating a "spiritual barrier." Then I realized this anger isn't something coming from me. I realized it, and then things took another shape - I felt a deep compassion on them; here they were, at the throne of God, and instead of giving to God through worship, they decided to say to themselves, "This is different, so let's sleep." I felt compassion for them because they were missing an opportunity to come before God in community. To those who didn't feel comfortable enough to try anything new: I love you.