Food for Thought

Wanted to share this entry with you all from one of my favorite books...The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne.

"Kids and homeless mothers preached the gospel. We shared communion - old apple cider and stale bagels or whatever we could find - and many of us were experiencing true communion for the first time in our lives.

"The body of Christ was alive, no longer trapped in stained-glass windows or books of systematic theology. The body of Christ was literal, living, hungry, thirsty, bleeding. Church was no longer something we did for an hour on Sunday, and church was not a building with a steeple...The church became something we are - an organism, not an organization. Church became fresh and vibrant, it was like we had brought something dead back to life."

No matter how many times I read through this book, this same passage speaks to me. How many of us are so worried about rules (many of which aren't even backed up Biblically...just what you've always done), that we have trapped ourselves into thinking that church is by any means systematic. We try so hard to fit it in our own little box of conformity that most times we close the box without even making sure Jesus made it in...We have to study these kinds of lessons, invite those kinds of people, say that kind of prayer, play this style of music. Sometimes it isn't about how a message is delivered, only that it is delivered in God's love and Spirit. I don't think Jesus meant for church to be so difficult or He wouldn't have said to "come like a child...have faith like a child."

I have had a lot of time away...a lot of time to think about where my relationship with Jesus has come these past couple of years. It was something I needed, but God knew I wouldn't take a break from the "system", unless He stepped in and made it so I would have one. In this time God has really shown me that it's not all those things we do that add up, but instead the time we spend in humility and submission to Him, allowing Him to take over so that my church becomes His church again. It's time to be literal, living, hungry, thirsty, bleeding. It's time to trash the box and start living abundantly, in dangerous wonder and reckless abandon.

My Savior is alive...I should be too...and so should His church.

He's waiting Are you ready?