I was helping our exec pastor Daryl last night empty a swimming pool.

Sunday night, going on 10 p.m. and there we stood, looking at slightly green water being sucked up by a sump pump. Looking rather pitiful, losing its air, collapsing in on itself, and that interesting green color. Hose snaking across the gymnasium floor and out the back door. Not a creature was stirring, except Sam the janitor in the lobby.

Less than an hour prior, the gym had been jumping! Crammed full of people, speakers cranked to hair raising volumes, the crowd literally sparking with energy, antecipation running rampant. Nine folks spitting in Satan’s eye, marrying themselves to the King and everybody was esctatic about it!

Lifepoint live, at it’s best. Pastor Jeff slamming a homerun over the fence on the art of dying; Pastor Daryl acting as the field commander, baptizing the crew and making sure that the affair ran like clockwork; Chad and band jamming like crazy folks; Brad and company making an ol’ gym look like a million dollar facility. Dang! It was good!

Back to the pool. A blue, inflatable swimming pool. Almost empty, rather sad looking. Who’d have guessed that it had been the entry way into heaven’s glory? Who’d have imagined, had they walked in at that moment, that anything of significance had taken place in that empty gym.

Wanting it to finish emptying so we could go home, it struck me. Through this slightly slimy, inflatable, blue pool we’d witnessed the divine intermingling with us. Not too terribly unlike what the Jesus Lord himself had done all those millenia ago.

As a visitor commented: “I don’t know what it is about you people, but this place is obviously where God has decided to show up.”

Yeah, it is . . .