When Gilda and I wrote our Advent guide for our church, we hoped it would help us all slow down and pay closer attention to Christ during the weeks leading up to Christmas.
What we didn’t anticipate was what it would awaken among us.
As our church journeyed through those daily readings together, something started to happen.
There was a deep joy in knowing that many of us were reading the same Scriptures, pondering the same questions, and allowing the same Spirit to meet us wherever we happened to be that day.
By Sunday, those daily encounters had become shared conversations.
People lingered after church.
They stopped us in the hallway to talk about something they had noticed.
Questions led to conversations.
Conversations led to deeper questions.
It felt as though our church wasn’t simply worshiping together.
We were learning to walk together.
Then our pastor asked us to write a Lenten guide.
As our church began that journey, something beautiful began unfolding.
The conversations became richer.
During Lent, that shared attention which had begun in Advent deepened.
People weren’t simply reading it and moving on with their day.
They were carrying it with them.
They came eager to talk about what they were discovering, the questions they were wrestling with, and the places where God was quietly meeting them.
Their wonder became contagious.
It awakened the same wonder in us.
What had begun as something we hoped might encourage our church was now encouraging us as well.
We found ourselves looking forward to those conversations every bit as much as everyone else.
People weren’t looking for quick answers.
They wanted to linger.
To wonder.
To listen.
To hear what others were seeing.
What surprised me most was that Gilda and I, though we had written the guide, found ourselves learning right alongside everyone else.
Someone would notice a connection we had completely missed.
Another would share how a passage had met them in the middle of their own story, and suddenly familiar words opened in ways we had never imagined.
Again and again I found myself thinking,
“How did I never see that before?”
A shared hunger was growing.
Not simply for more Bible study.
Not another program.
But for more of Christ.
More of His Word.
More time together.
More honest conversations.
More opportunities to listen.
More opportunities to wonder.
And, before long, several people asked if we would gather on Mondays.
Not after Lent had ended.
Right in the middle of the journey.
Looking back now, Mondays at Mary’s didn’t feel like the beginning of something new.
It felt like the next step in something the Spirit had already been doing among us.
From the very beginning, Gilda and I made one simple decision.
People over program.
We would certainly open the Scriptures.
But we would never become so committed to an agenda that we failed to notice the people Christ had gathered around the table.
So every Monday begins the same way.
We simply check in.
How has your week been?
What are you thankful for?
How can we pray for you?
At first, our conversations sounded much like they do in many churches.
“I’m doing fine.”
But trust has a way of changing conversations.
Week after week, walls slowly came down.
Stories became more honest.
Prayer became more personal.
The table became a safe place to belong.
One phrase has become common around our table.
“Wait—tell us more about that.”
I love those moments.
No one rushes to solve another person’s struggle.
No one hurries past another person’s story.
We simply lean in.
I’ve come to see that curiosity is one of love’s quiet expressions.
One of my favorite memories came as we worked through Gilda’s book, The Lord’s Prayer: A Contemplative Journey through Sacred Words.
We expected to move steadily through the chapters.
Instead, we spent weeks on just two words.
Our Father.
Not because we couldn’t move on.
Because we didn’t want to.
Those two words carried different stories for every person around the table.
Before we could understand the prayer more deeply, we first had to hear one another.
Each story became a gift.
Each perspective helped the rest of us see something we would never have seen by ourselves.
I’ve come to believe that some things Christ intends to show us simply cannot be discovered alone.
That has given new depth to Paul’s prayer that we might comprehend, “with all the saints,” the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love (Ephesians 3:18–19).
Over these months we have learned one another’s stories.
We have carried one another’s burdens.
We have laughed until tears rolled down our faces.
We have wept together as Christ gently revealed more of Himself through His Word and through one another.
We came hoping to know Christ more deeply.
By His kindness, we also came to know one another.
Looking back now, I don’t think those were ever meant to be separated.
One ordinary table.
One shared hunger.
One faithful Monday after another.
A note from G. Wray:
Gilda invited me to share what I have seen from the other side of the table. Perhaps that is part of the gift of seeing together: each of us notices something the other might have missed.
©️ G. Wray. All rights reserved.