This weekend my long-term girlfriend-club gathered in Michigan for our bi-annual hiatus from real life. In decades past, the M&Ms met monthly in the Chicago suburbs, but in the last 5 years it’s become more difficult to find monthly dates that would work with busy schedules.

We finally settled on two “retreats” each year, both in Michigan. That’s a boon for me, since the rest of them still live in Illinois. But they willingly bear the expense and commitment of a 200 mile round trip in order to spend 24 hours together twice a year.

Sometimes we find a quiet place to have a prayer time, but whether or not that happens, increasingly we end up talking on spiritual topics. That’s because our personal commitments to Christ are the glue that has held us together all these years, and that same glue promises to bind us throughout eternity.

In any given year we don’t get to spend much time together, what with diverse travel schedules, grandmothering responsibilities, active careers, and volunteer hours, but nothing can take away the sense of togetherness we share that’s outside of time and space. That’s made possible by our God who lives outside of those realms and sometimes invites us to join him there. For example, in prayer.

Figuratively, the M&Ms meet in the Lord’s throne room whenever we approach him in conversation, and if the requests we bring are about each other, we like to think of ourselves as being in there together, with him and with each other.

A man named John Fawcett said it well in a hymn:

Blest be the tie that binds

Our hearts in Christian love;

The fellowship of kindred minds

Is like to that above.

The M&M women have a “fellowship of kindred minds.” The word “fellowship” means shared mutual interests and experiences in relationships of trust. “Kindred” refers to a person’s family or relatives collectively, and the 7 of us certainly do feel like family members who can be trusted. So… “the fellowship of kindred minds” describes what the M&Ms have. As the old hymn says, the tie that binds our hearts is Christian love.

All of this may sound weighty and overly religious, but lest you think there was any halo-polishing in my Michigan cottage this weekend, know that we also played the word-game “Catch Phrase” from 10:00 pm until 1:20 am, laughing ourselves into laryngitis and bellyaches. Though our minds are tied together in Christ, those same minds can also get good-and-goofy, too.

“God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord… that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.” (1 Corinthians 1:9-10)