Politically Impatient

I am beginning to loathe the fall.  This is awful because it is traditionally one of my favorite times of the year.  I got married in September, I love to watch the leaves change, I adore the return of football, my sons loved marching band.  It's just full of all kinds of great activity, and it leads up to all those wonderful holidays.   Typically the weather cools off, but is still delightful.  It's the return to programming everywhere, I get to see people I missed all summer.  What is not to love about that?!

I will tell you!  It is the return to politics.  It is the billion political posts that drive me just about around the bend.  It is the right posting articles about the evil of the left, it is the left posting articles about the evil of the right.  Everyone finds the very thing that will bring enlightenment to everyone else, only it never does.  It simply provokes an article from the opposing party pointing out how unenlightened the first post was.  No one impacts anyone else, except to have them dig in deeper to the position they were already holding.  As to the undecided, they are deciding they don't want to be like either side, and they opt out. 

Already showing up in facebook the battle is launching, and this is not even a presidential election.  There are people I begin hiding because I can't bear to read their quote from one source or another.  You only need to read where it comes from to know what it says.  Can't anyone see this doesn't help anyone but the people who already think what you do?

I am sure I am the nut about this.  Others seem to enjoy the battle, working hard for ammunition to beat the other side.  Lord knows there are industries that thrive because of the on going war.  There has long been the belief that one party helps to hold the other party accountable, but I wonder how much this holds true.  So much in the world has changed, so much intolerance of intolerance, I wonder if we are ready to be people who reclaim some real core identity instead of people who are defined by opposition.

The Church is certainly experiencing a season where we are being called to reclaim our purpose and our heart.  We spent much too long fighting with the opposition on every topic from the way we baptize and who can serve where, to what color our carpet would be.  We were so opinionated and deeply entrenched that the world decided they could be spiritual without us.  In order to be the place that disciples are made, we must return to our first love.  The call Paul gave to the Philippians in Chapter 2 still stands:

 

Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort in love, any sharing in the Spirit,

 any sympathy, ² complete my joy by thinking the same way, having the same love, being united, and agreeing with each other. ³ Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. ⁴ Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others.

 

While I am not suggesting that the world of politics pays all that much attention to Paul or the scripture, I do believe it would be a real blessing if the Church could show the world how much better it is to be for something instead of against something.  What if we stopped trying to compete and started complimenting?  What might happen if we made room for difference, and still stayed true to our own beliefs?  What if instead of becoming a big blob of nothing, we became people who are so comfortable with our identity, we didn't need to make others look the same to belong? 

 

Just a thought.  Until then, perhaps I better avoid social media under after election day.

 

 



Hope for the Helpless, Rest for the Weary

Warning Label: Contents of this blog are mostly likely going to be highly opinionated.  Proceed at your own risk.

The Church is God's creation.  The Church is God's preferred way to have people in community reaching people in community.  The scripture help us a lot with the kind of treatment required in community to make this possible.  It describes the type of discomfort we may encounter, it tells us sacrifice, surrender and suffering are a part of the life of a disciple.  We are even told that none of this goes unnoticed by God, who is already at work bringing redemption, healing and wholeness.  I think one can safely say, without much fear of being dismissed as a heretic, that God is all in, about and  all through this Church business.  It is a God thing. 

Then you go into a church and you run into the community and quite frankly you begin to believe that scripture is propaganda for a bait and switch strategy where you think you are getting a ginger bread house, but instead there is a witch in there who wants to have you for dinner, literally.  I don't mean just the laity or just the clergy.  I mean all of these modern day cannibals who seem to enjoy eating their young, old and everyone in between.

So, if you are like me, you start thinking to yourself, hmmm this church thing may need to be decimated from the face of the earth so people stop thinking that's Jesus.  Not that this is the only way to clean it up, but it seems like a permanent solution.  Only, before I can get this even into the public eye, I come across the Church being God's creation.  Church...and church....and God....and community.  Good grief.  Where does the Gospel fit in here?

How, my friends, does the church become the Church again?  Somewhere in the back of my mind is that song 'Cry out to Jesus' by Third Day keeps running through my head:

There is hope for the helpless
Rest for the weary
Love for the broken heart
There is grace and forgiveness
Mercy and healing
He'll meet you wherever you are
Cry out to Jesus, Cry out to Jesus 

 

 

And as I sing along, I wonder if I believe that if I cry out to Jesus, he will come and lead us in the church back to being the Church again.  I say I believe that, but do I pray believing it?  Am I crying out to and for Jesus, or just crying?  I know if it isn't God, it doesn't happen, but I find myself working, and scheming and stressing as if it were all me.  I remember that if it isn't God at work then it just doesn't work at all.  The whole house of cards falls, because this was God's rodeo from the beginning.  How do I get so frantic about saving this for God?!

 

So here is my public confession, I am dedicating myself to  having no hope in any plans that aren't God's plans.  I  am committed to thinking there is no program that will help, if it isn't God's program.  I am almost sure that the church doesn't become the Church until it stops trying to do things for God and starts trying to do things with God.

 

For an overachieving, problem solver, recovering perfectionist, this is a major life change.   In fact, I heard the sound of hell freezing over just a few moments ago.  I just truly believe that it is that simple.  This is God's show.  We are not puppets, we get to choose if we will do what we are asked to do, but this is not our plan, our call or our adventure.  We step into the best adventure ever because in the process we get adopted into the family, with no way to be disinherited, thrown off the island, or sold out by our siblings.  We stay as long as we want to.  Is that a deal or what?!  Of course there is a catch, it will cost us everything and this isn't and never will be our show, it is always God's.  It isn't our party, and we don't get to say how it goes, who gets invited and where it happens.  We just get to come and enjoy the Host.

 

But we get to cry out to Jesus. 

It's a good deal.  Let's take it.