Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give will never thirst. But the water that I shall give them will become in them a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. God is Spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth. (John 4:14, 24)
To all Friends everywhere, and to a world that God yearns to heal, we send our love.
More than thirty young adult Friends gathered at Jordans Meeting House, near Beaconsfield, UK, to experience the Spirit of God in and between us, nurturing and transforming us. We came from many places: Kenya, the US, and all over Britain. We have been united in being drawn to this place, and united in finding Living Water to quench our thirst, even though we call that Water by different names. We want to share our hope with the world: the place we found this Water is within. You can join us there without even a step.
The Divine Hand has been shaping and forming us to hold the Living Water together. We have felt held, loved, and understood, not because we are all alike, but because we are different, from different traditions and backgrounds, with different stories and experiences. This has meant we have much to learn from each other. The Spirit has used our differences to connect us more deeply. Look into each other’s eyes if you want to see the Light.
Our times of worship have been deep and sincere, in spirit and truth. We have been restored by water from the eternal well. This has come in song, silence, speech, caring, cooking, washing up, and sitting around a campfire. In all this, we have been convinced again of the connecting and revitalizing Power in and among us all, present in all creation. We thank God for all we have shared: joy, laughter, tears, and a home away from home.
The Kingdom of God is among us: together, imperfect, a vessel for the Water of Life. In our togetherness, God’s goodness becomes manifest in the world.
We have experienced the reality of openness to the inward Teacher, not as Quaker jargon but as lived experience. We have been on an adventure together, trying to be receptive to our Guide. It has been new, hard, and deeply joyful.
We came to this place looking for guidance for our lives. Are we moving at the right pace? Are we heading in the right direction? We have learned to move, not with haste and anxiety, but at the pace of the Spirit, in God’s time and in the matrix of prayer.
We have come in trust that we will find what we are looking for. We have trusted each other, being open and vulnerable. We have trusted our Guide to lead us into community and show us where we are needed. In true community, each need is tended as each person is given the ability. Trust in God and each other has drawn us into depth, stillness, and openness to the Teacher. We hope to carry this openness and share it with everyone we meet. It is hard to stay tender in a spiky world, but it is what we are called to.
We felt welcomed, by the Lord and each other, as if encountering the heart of God. God has a heart for the joy and the suffering, the beauty and the pain. The gift we have experienced in our time together is for each of us, but it is for our world too. Each of us has a place where we are planted and sometimes struggling to bloom. We take heart that we can experience the Living God at any time, wherever we go. This is the place where the grace of God never stops falling. We come to it broken, hurting, loving, with great joy and passion. We pray: help us to be faithful, dear God. Thank You for showing us Your heart, dear Jesus. You are in each one, whatever we call You. Thank You for fulfilling Your promise to show up and lead us wherever two or three – or thirty – gather in Your name, Your life and power.
We have felt encouragement to open the door, let the Lord Jesus in, and let His love show. We hope to keep opening our hearts to the Spirit of Love, just as we opened the double doors that unbolt and swing open in this meeting house, to let the light and wind in. Even in small moments, conversations and quiet togetherness, we can feel ourselves being visited by a Power greater than ourselves.
We met at a time of fear, with uncertainty about the future – our own and the world’s. Sitting with this, we felt God prying open doors we had closed, inviting us home, inviting us to trust, inviting us to lean in to God and each other. We heard a voice of Divine comfort and assurance: “I will provide. I will be there. I am always there, even and especially when things are hard and uncertain.”
Together, we are answering the call to come home, to extraordinary peace that passes understanding. This peace endures even in times of fear, uncertainty, and crumbling institutions. What is the ground of our faith? Not our meeting houses, or our practices, or our structures, but the Life we have felt together, the peace that Life gives, and the fire it lights in us.
In days like these, we must not be ashamed of the gospel message: that the Light is in and with us, and the darkness of the present time cannot overcome it. Let us rejoice in sharing that Light with each other, as we have begun to here. Thank You, God.
Jordans Young Adult Friends Gathering, Eighth Month 2025