Perhaps some people are missing church-life greatly, and others are finding out they can do without it. In many ways a crisis can be a great sorting out.
What is church, after all? It is meant to be a close-knit group of people who worship God together and enact (bring into being) the love and unity and mission to which they have been called. Their unity is based on the One they worship and reflects His nature, for He lives in them in the Spirit. Apart from that Spirit, it's only a social club, and like many social clubs it accomplishes many wonderful things and yet is also often rife with contention.
If you are away from your family for a long time, you long to see them again. You don't feel whole apart from them. Not only that, apart from them you are hampered in the pursuit of the mission to which you have been called--your pruprose-- as a father or mother, a son or daughter. In other words, you have been called to this pursuit together. You can't be a family man apart from your family. And you can't be a churchman apart from your church family.
And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers." Matt. 12:49
And yet, here we are, social distancing. We have this time now to, at the very least, consider how we will live our lives when the lockdown is over. There will be new challenges, and we do have a tendency to fall back into old ruts. Watch and pray, said the Master.
Which brings me to "resurrection." Now that Christ is risen, there is nothing more inevitable than this: there is a new world coming.
Even now it springs up! Do you not see it? [Isaiah 43:19]
No comments:
Post a Comment