Everybody, Always

in my hand.
He told me, “No. Honestly, I need to be around people this week more
than ever.”
I flew out a few days later and was blown away by the unity this
group had developed over their years together. As I finished my talk, I
saw my friend sitting in the front row looking at the floor. It’s a tradition
in some faith communities to lay hands on someone who is hurting. It
wasn’t part of my faith tradition, and if you haven’t seen this done before,
it’s not a big mystical thing. It’s just a way to show support and love and
community. I was thinking about doing that, but honestly, it would just be
the two guys next to him and three people behind touching him and the
people in row fifty would just be touching the people in row forty-nine.
Then I had an idea. What if we crowd-surfed him?
My friend looked a little surprised when I asked everyone to stand up.
I asked four strong guys to hoist him up over their heads and told
everyone instead of symbolically laying hands on him, we were going to
actually lay hands on him while we crowd-surfed him. Before I was
finished getting the sentence out, they already had my friend in the air
and had passed him a few rows back. He laid back with his arms
outstretched for the next half hour as thousands of hands were laid on
him. He was a guy wrapped in agony and enveloped in love. This is who
we are and what we were made to do as a community. That’s our church.
We don’t need to just talk about lifting others up in prayer when
they’re hurting. Actually lift one another up instead. I don’t mean this as
a metaphor. Seriously, walk up behind someone who is hurting and lift
them right off the ground. Don’t be creepy about it, but do it. You won’t
need to tell them you’re praying for them—they’ll know. If you’re
wondering where Jesus’ friends are, just find people whose feet are a foot
off the ground because someone else is lifting them up. You just found
our church.