The Body

The body of Christ is a simple yet a cloudy concept when lived aloud.  Various perceptions on how the body translates from the Bible to "real life."  You wouldn't assume that with all the hang ups we encounter, being Gods body would cause such infliction. Yet it causes passionate preferences to stir and often show themselves as we evaluate how ministry is to be interpreted and mostly how it's funded.  Because we all know the rubber that meets the road is the dollar.

If we concerned ourselves with being the body in our actions and thoughts, there would be little left over to make an issue.  It would be just the bottom drippings of the pan, not the focus of our meetings and swarming itself around the picnics like an unwanted pest.  Yet in our culture we find plethora of ideas to discuss, re-discuss and sometimes come to blows over how we are to best be Christ's body. 

Giving to the poor.  Period.  We can't determine a litmus test for who those people are because we might turn to be the victim and that can't happen.  We clothe our talks with being good stewards and claim that concept trumps all other motives.  As I dissect in my mind, our discussions seem to take flight whenever we bring up money or the spending of funds.  God has entrusted us, no doubt.  But he also says his ways are higher than ours.  Believing without knowledge, faith.  So how does God invade our spontaneity?  

Do we allow his voice to blow as a breeze, gathering our well intentions and doing more than we ask or dream of?  If gods will and character depended solely on our stewardship, then we would be the Main catalyst for all his work.  

In fact if it weren't for his gracious love, there would be no me.  I simply don't have the wherewithal to make sense of most of the issues I face daily.  I can plan and organize stuff and thought yet god is still mysterious.  We delete the mystery if it all comes back to me.

I think this makes room for free interpretation. Making gods word available to me, relevant for my world, my struggle this moment. Not based on works or how many committees I attend or how well I speak. Or the flamboyancy of my words and lifestyle.  How often I am more concerned with "who" is in and how comfortable I am with worshipping with "them" than listening to God, the source of love.  In fact, He is love.

Wow. It causes me to shelve my rustic opinions and forces me to remove the scales upon my vision so that I see. See what?  The lonely, the brokenhearted, the empty, the hopeless, the disabled.

See God doesn't miss them.  He not only makes room for them, he befriends them.  He desires to know their pain.  And he has the power to transform.  We seem to neglect the need for transformation when we've got the rhetoric down pat.  We know the drill.  This is our home.  Hummm.  Doesn't leave room for the outcast or the unspoken.  The spontaneous love that my redeemer has for me.

Yet we are called to be in His image.  Wonder as he scans the Earth to and fro, does he see us, completely His?  Or more committed to our tactics, means to an end, upholding of the rules,being the  gatekeepers of our pretty gathering places?  I hope he sees me.  More broken than ever, in need of unconditional love and more concerned with living the gospel Of love than preserving my territory or rewriting my laws of redemption.