"What is the Church for, if we don't reach out and hold the hurting?" (j. casper)
It's easy to forget what we, the Church, are for; it's easy to stop digging through the junk we call "church", to stop doing what it is we are to be doing and love like we're supposed to be loving. I won't even pretend I have a perfect paragraph or "how-to" for us... I just know that we're so often not doing it. But I try not to sit around and complain about what we're not doing, and instead work towards helping my brother and sisters (and myself) become betters lovers of God and people.
It doesn't take long, though, to start giving up, to let our posh, American, selfish lifestyle suck the life right out of us, and almost quit altogether. It's easier to start picking out carpet colors and song styles that better suit our tastes, than to tear down walls of racial divide and sit on the curb with a homeless drunkard who is lying to my face and still see the face of Christ in him.
It's easier to just suffocate than keep gasping for air.
Ah, but tonight I was so encouraged. It takes one conversation, one soul to help you get going again. We are not alone. Josh is easing through Memphis on a road trip that's just beginning, but he's come into our home with his quiet smile and given us new hope, that our Love is not in vain and that all over the world people are wrestling and struggling. I love it that our brothers and sisters stand with us in solidarity and give us nudges and keep us going.
Sometimes I feel like I'm just climbing a sand dune, taking one step, only to slide back down, maybe even further back than where I started. We are a hurting and broken people, us world-dwellers, and very few of us have felt the spark, fanned the flame, and lived into the Love that put on flesh for us. Very few of us rest in that. And so we sit on curbs and give away some money and move into the abandoned places; we take risks and open our homes and put an extra place setting at the dinner table. We give ourselves away.
Friends, it is so much more than the style of music and order or worship at the 11 o'clock hour on Sunday. We've got to know that.
thank you, brother.
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