c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com)

UNDATED _ My broken wristwatch is being repaired. I have no idea of the time as I awaken at my father-in-law’s farm in southern New Hampshire on the first day of summer vacation.

The golden glow across fields of timothy looks brighter than usual. I must have slept late.

Vacation routines come smoothly. While coffee brews, I set up my laptop computer on the kitchen table. While the family sleeps and sunlight envelops this 220-year-old farm house, I write. This is peace.

Around nine, the kitchen door opens, and five-year-old William enters the room and climbs into my lap. We snuggle. The peace of solitude gives way to the peace of the morning hug.

This blessed routine started eighteen years ago, when I took the early-morning shift with baby Nathanael. Every morning since then, I have listened for a wakeup cry, little feet on the stairs, a study door opening, or here at Grandpa’s, the brass latch whose clank signal’s a child’s arrival.

I wonder if God has these same routines with us. I wonder if God learns the sound of our approaching feet, or our restless stirring in the night watch when our defenses crumble, or the welling up of our grief, or those few moments when we accept being a child and needing a hug.

God told his people long ago that he had no desire for grand gestures.”I despise your solemn assemblies,”God said.”Do you think I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” Elaborate sacrifices, a multitude of slaughtered animals, finely tuned liturgies, pageantry and parades, gloss and sheen _ they mean nothing to God. Scripture suggests that God waits for the sound of approaching feet: a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a penitent heart, a soul crying for freedom, a hinge creaking and a small head poking shyly around a corner.

This is when we do honor to God. Not when we make lavish display. Especially not when we fight over every detail of that display: which gender or sexual orientation may lead it, what rules govern participation in it, what aesthetic preferences will guide our language and music. Do we think God has suddenly developed an appetite for solemn assemblies? Do we believe God puts creation on hold while self-will battles self-will, and self-important committees argue over punctuation?

We do honor to God when we start the day knowing our need of God’s lap.

Church life nowadays seems filled with arguments and parades. Well-meaning people work long hours trying to do the work they believe church requires. They argue over sex. They argue over language. They argue over the place of women. They argue over leadership. They argue over Scripture.

Then they parade, hoping, it seems, that the excellence of a good parade will heal the wounds just opened in debate.

But when do we crawl onto God’s lap? When do we know our need of God? When do we shyly submit? I think it’s happening now, and denominations don’t see it.

While denominations track membership statistics _ looking for justification in an upward trend line or explaining away a downward line _ and fight over right opinion, believers are doing faith work on their own. Congregations functionally withdraw from their denominations. Even at the local level, traditional church structures stir little enthusiasm.

It is a time of deconstruction, a shifting of focus away from arguments and parades. People are buying faith-related books, forming small groups, participating in meta-movements like Promise Keepers, and attending classes rather than committee meetings.

This moment is frustrating to those who still want to argue and plan parades. But the stress of modern life has overwhelmed old ways of doing church. What I see are people lifting the latch on a door, and like my five-year-old son, looking for a lap to crawl into. Not to hide _ old structures may have been a hiding place _ but to gather strength for growing. That need for God has nothing to do with budgets or sex battles or any of the earnest causes that splinter our churches.

Nor, I believe, does God have anything to do with those divisions. It seems God listens for the sound of approaching feet, not strident voices claiming right opinion.

DEA END EHRICH