A Simple, Sweet Life

(Circa 1972)

The church: it wasn’t a place to go to once or twice every week. It was a life – and we were now living it – right in downtown Los Angeles. We eagerly settled into our new 3^rd floor apartment, just one block from the meeting hall. Hundreds of church people lived within just a few blocks of the meeting hall; a little microcosm, a “bubble” of humanity, self-isolated from the cacophony of the world. It was peaceful, simple and sweet. Just walking to and from meetings filled my heart with joy as smiling people greeted us with “Praise the Lord!” or “Hallelujah!”

…and we couldn’t wait to get to meetings. We would have to get there at least 45 minutes early to get a decent seat and no one waited for anyone to start the meeting. Before we even walked through the door of the plain, unpretentious meeting hall, the singing and testimonies had already begun, the music floating like fresh air, soaring through the atmosphere. Sometimes my heart was so full of joy, I felt like it would burst. And in the meetings, there would also be a time for teaching from the Bible. I was like a sponge, soaking up things I had never learned before – things that were so applicable to my life. The Word of God was alive and I voraciously ate every word!

The church consisted of people of all ages, ethnicities and nationalities. Throughout the meeting hall was heard accents from every part of the United States and every corner of the world. But there was one thing that bound us together: we were all simply in love with Jesus. We loved doing life together. When we weren’t meeting together in the big meeting hall, we were together in small groups, in our homes, sharing meals together or helping each other with various tasks. And whenever we were together, there was fellowship – real fellowship. We would share our experience of the Lord and enjoy what he was doing in our lives.

Every church has a culture all its own and this one was something I had never experienced before. Our way of living wasn’t mandated as a law; it was simply the way we lived. In the midst of the hippie movement, we were unaffected by its influence, even though many of the young people that came had been hippies. We dressed and behaved very conservatively. We didn’t have televisions and rarely listened to the radio or read the newspaper and we didn’t celebrate many holidays (mostly because of the origins of their traditions). I guess our lives were so full of Jesus, we didn’t really want anything else.

We even had our own vocabulary: men and women were called “brothers and sisters”. When referred to collectively, we were called “saints”. The church building was called the “meeting hall”. The church services were called “meetings”. We had huge “conferences” throughout the year, consisting of many churches coming together for meetings to study the Bible.

One huge component of our church life culture was HOSPITALITY! Every time there was a conference our homes were open for people to stay with us. When people would come to town, just traveling through, they could stay with us, rather than stay in a hotel. Another component was “corporate living”. There were brothers’ houses and sisters’ houses, where the single “brothers” or “sisters” would live together and many, many times, the single “saints” would live with another couple or family. One time I tried to count how many people we have had either live with us or stay with us for a short time. I lost count – there were too many.

Those months in Los Angeles were like living in another world: peaceful, sweet and serene. I remember how the Lord had spoken to us on our vacation the year before, through a field of clover in a redwood forest. Each sprig of clover grew on the top of a delicate stem, about 6 inches high. They were all the same height. No one sprout stood out among the others and when a breeze came along, they all, in unison, bowed together, yielding to the wind’s gentle urging. The Lord told me that the field of clover is his church. Each sprout is very special, yet not one sprout is more important than any other. And when he speaks, they all, in unity, bow together in sweet surrender.

Psalm 133 describes our experience: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.”

And such was our life – the fulfillment of the vision God gave to us.