The entrance didn’t exactly exude “fellowship.”
But beggars can’t be choosers, and we were beggars yesterday – my Kairos teammates and I – as we began formation for the retreat weekend we hope to share in early April with inmates at Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois.
Beggars, because the meeting room we had originally scheduled for our gathering in Chester became unavailable mid-week due to severe water damage. That news set our leaders to scrambling – where to hold an all-day meeting…just two days hence…for the 25 men on team?
A few phone calls by one of our local members solved the dilemma soon enough, securing an invitation for us to use the Fellowship Hall in the basement of Peace Evangelical Lutheran Church. We came begging, and more or less as strangers: No members of that congregation serve on our team. Even so, we were welcomed to use their facility on very short notice.
Welcomed, and moved to ponder the often-unassuming way in which salvation breaks into our world.
Because you wouldn’t look at that basement-back-door of the church and think, “Here the King of Glory enters in.” But Christ and the Holy Spirit did join us during our time in the Fellowship Hall yesterday. God was present to us, and began a good work in us, even though we came to the back-door as beggars.
In that encounter, I wonder whether we don’t have some abiding spiritual connection with Simeon and Anna, the unassuming human portals we meet in the gospel for today’s Feast of the Presentation. Note that neither Simeon nor Anna seem to have an official role at the temple. They are not members of the priestly class. But they don’t appear to consider this “outsider” status to be disqualifying in any way. They simply praise God that salvation has come, in the unexpected form of the infant they now caress.
They see that salvation has come into their humble orbits, and indeed into the whole world. And their ability to see this gift is a big part of what we celebrate on this great feast, I think. Simeon and Anna open our eyes to the very real possibility that salvation still comes into a broken world. And when it comes, it often enters through the back door.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 
In the most unlikely places, God shows up for us. Blessings on your coming retreat.
Appreciate the prayers, Steve. (And if ever feel a tug to join a Kairos team, just let me know…😇)
Thanks for sharing with me.RonKind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.