Belonging and Becoming

Connections Conference 2025 ~ Belonging to Become ~ Disciples of Jesus

What deepens your sense of belonging? And how does belonging influence our becoming, our becoming more like Jesus? This question has been simmering in me for weeks, because "Belonging to Become" is the theme of the Connections Conference 2025 with Curt Thompson and CBK, the Center for Being Known.

There is something so powerful and hopeful in the experience of belonging. And we are designed for belonging, first to God and then to one another. "I am divinely designed, deeply desired, lavishly loved, fully forgiven, a sacred story of grace ~ never to be repeated." James Bryan Smith.

But the sense or experience of being outside, sidelined, diminished, or rejected... began with the fall in Genesis 3 and continues. Isolation and sin have wounded our hearts, stealing energy, confidence, and joy. There are so many experiences in a broken world that can fragment us within, separate us from one another, and blind us to the belonging God offers within the love of the Trinity.

Jesus with his followers

• Rejection and attack

• Unhealed wounds

• Ruptures in relationship

• Feeling unseen

• And more...

But God invites us into belonging again and again.

For years now, I have driven to a ministry where my daughter participated and volunteered, sometimes weekly and sometimes less frequently. At a particular curve on this road in Pennsylvania there are two old churches. The one with stained-glass windows caught my attention, and I longed to see them from inside. This desire niggled at me. Finally I decided to search the name of the church, contact the office, and ask if I could visit.

A few days later with gracious hospitality the church secretary led me into the old sanctuary. Vibrant stained-glass windows surrounded me and the light shone through creating a bold statement declared in color. There were many images, but the largest one stood out. It was the only image in the church with figures, it depicted Jesus and two disciples. The only image of Jesus held by those walls portrayed him with two women, Mary and Martha, my heart was captured. I had to let it sink in. Two disciples. Two women. Women like me.

God met me in that sacred space. I experienced a deeper sense of belonging as God encouraged my heart as a disciple, who is a woman, through the art held by the walls of that church. Light shone through the image. My heart was strengthened that day... to keep following, to keep gazing at Jesus, to keep serving and sitting at Jesus' feet... and to keep making art.

Two disciples. Two women.

Good stories, artwork, poetry, the created world (God's art)... can give us a vision for what matters and for what could be. A picture leads us forward, like a map. A poem hydrates our soul, like water hydrates the body (consider the psalms). A story strengthens us when weariness sets in. (Consider Moses' hands being held up by Aaron and Hur, Exodus 17 or Naomi being companioned by Ruth.) An image can bring clarity when chaos overwhelms. (Consider God painting an experiential picture for Elijah when he was weary and disillusioned, 1 Kings 19.)

Art can slow us and deepen us... when we are harried and hurried... too caught up in the concrete tasks, the seemingly urgent, and our agenda (such as Jesus' parables, gazing at a sunrise, or considering Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal). Art can capture a truth and allow it to access our hearts in profound ways... deepening our sense of belonging to God, our Creator. And belonging to God leads us into becoming all God intended us to be. He will complete the work he has begun in us when we are willing to say, "Yes" to God.

Called by Jesus, "Come, Follow Me "

Perhaps you are drawn to the theme of the Connections Conference 2025,

Belonging to Become.

We are created to belong to God and to belong to one another.

I am honored to be a part of the conference this year as an artist and a speaker.

Perhaps you would like to join us.

Find out more here:

Connections 2025

"We long for the beauty and goodness of deeply connected, creative relationships. However, the world in which we live bears the evidence of violence that emerges from our fear and our shame, expressing itself, ultimately, in some form of social hierarchy, a feature of what it has meant to be part of human civilization for virtually as long as we have been civilized. But there is hope to be found in our suffering, hope that emerges in the context of confessional communities that work to tell each person’s story more truly—and as such, so also the story of the community that God is creating and preparing to dwell in his kingdom. Moreover, in gazing upon, in beholding beauty in the context of our violence-inflicted griefs, we give God access to transform us, as that beauty circumvents the defenses we have erected in response to our unrepaired ruptures. Hence, we become insofar as we belong to this very community that suffers together as it gazes upon the beauty of the Lord. In so doing, we each, as individuals, and we all, collectively, come to belong to our Lord and to each other, while we become more reflective of that same God whose image we bear." Curt Thompson, MD