What Was and Is to Be?

Most of my life I have lived and worked within 5 minutes of my church home. I was always there. Literally. I ate there, prayed there. I ministered there. For most of my life I was either tithing or sacrificially giving to the church

Life has changed in a big way. For the last 5 years, I spend 11 hours a day traveling to, from, or at work. I have little or no time left. My once immaculate house is a cluttered mess. I long to join in ministry but I am too tired or not here. I do not have the energy to work 8 hours non-stop and make calls to patients to and from and then go to church for a function. Add to the mix, I have family now living with me due to job loss.

So what is my response. Many Sundays I come in the back door, and skirt up the stairs. I teach, some times I sing in the choir, but most of the time, I travel out the doors as quickly as possible. Why? Because the people I see I cannot serve as I did. Hurting people, I cannot love and hold as long as I did. The needs of the church cry out to me and I financially do not have the resources to help as I did.

So I retreat from the place and the faces of those I love. At work, I keep the perfect desk and am the perfect employee. I work hard and smart. I am appreciated and stroked.

But I have come to a realization. An epiphany, of sorts. That I cannot live in the past, cannot grieve for what was and may never be. My church is a sending forth. It is as if She is my parent. She has groomed and loved me and now I am sent into the world, beloved and encouraged to be Her in a world that so needs Him. The homeless are living with me. The hurting and grieving are not only in the patient room I enter but the cubicle next door. The sick and disabled sleeps beside me every evening. The children lie on a twin bed in my room.

Oh God catch me before I slide into a new dimension of grieving and remorse over my blindness and let me truly see what you have primed me for.

How many folks in the church are like me. How many of the missing and the lost are not there because they cannot give as they did - presence, gifts, time, or service. What if the Church became His Source. Equipping folks to live in the world instead of berating them because they are not within the physical walls. Walls that remind them of what they should but cannot be.

Wow! And wouldn't That Place be the Place I would want to be as much as I could to receive what only He can give. Wouldn't He draw others to me and therefore to Him. To find the hive where I return to week after week to receive His spiritual nourishment, His heavenly manna.

Father, your church today is not a community of faith within brick walls, no matter how beautiful. But a terminal of sorts, where folks are given rest and restoration and fuel for their sending forth in mission to a world so needing and wanting of Your affirmation, peace, and hope. Help me not to shy away from those around me, afraid I have nothing to give, but excited in that very fact. Then and only then can I be a conduit of You and You alone.

Amen