[Our second Catch On teleconference Bible study is tomorrow night at 7 pm PDT. We had a great turnout last week but there’s still room for more. Click here to download our Catch On Workbook to review and get ready for tomorrow night. To listen to a recording of last Wednesday’s session, dial (218) 237-3850, enter access code 124393# and the recording number: 090711#.]

We’ve all been in a New York state of mind again with the ten-year anniversary of 911. The song “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z has been in my head lately, and not necessarily his hip-hop version with Alicia Keys, but the version we heard on CBS 60 Minutes Sunday night special with kids serenading a New York firehouse near the sight of the twin towers. It was a touching scene. “New York… these streets will make you feel brand new/Big lights will inspire you, let’s hear it for New York…”

In his excellent essay on life in New York City, Colson Whitehead creates the possibility of 8 million personal New Yorks – a different view of the city for every person who lives there. “Your New York is not my New York…  you have your own personal skyline.”

For Whitehead, each person’s “New York” is the sum total of their regular experiences there. For some the twin towers “still stand because we saw them, moved in and out of their long shadows, were lucky enough to know them for a time.” But young New Yorkers – those, say, 15 and younger – will have no such memory.

Something about this reality rings true for people’s spiritual experiences in Christ. No two people’s experience will be the same. Nor can you judge one by another. Comparison is out. Personal experience is unique to each one, and it is important for us to allow for those differences. The next generation’s New York will have a different skyline, but it will be no less New York.

And so, just like the gospel, there is something about New York that transcends the experiences of its citizens. “Maybe we become New Yorkers,” he concludes, “the day we realize that New York will go on without us.”

Faith is much bigger than our experience of it. It is not just what we experience of God that validates faith; it is the fact that God is here and validates himself without us. He will go on. His kingdom is forever.

And it’s to this that we owe the magic. That God can and will do his will without us but he includes us and even wants to work through us to accomplish it. He doesn’t need us, but he wants us. If God can get his will done without us, what good is that to him? He wants partners… co-workers. He wants participation. Don’t you want to be a part of something bigger than you?