Excuse me, sir, where's the church?

I've been dreaming of a church. A church where the members are not each islands to themselves, but where each member is a part of each other's lives. Not just on Sunday, but always an integral part of life. Kind of like a body. One body. You don't just need your arm or your eye on Sunday. Why do we only need each other on Sunday? For that matter, pretty much all the churches I've been to around here don't even need each other on Sunday. We just show up, exchange a couple of greetings, file into our usual pews, scan the audience for visitors and make note of where they're sitting so we can avoid them afterwards, shake hands with five people around us after the second verse of the second song (thus fulfilling our duty of fellowship), enjoy the message--even take notes, feel a little conviction, then scurry quickly back to the safe insulation of our own private homes and wolf down whatever we're having for lunch . . . by ourselves.

I've been dreaming of a church that spends its money on the body and not the building. I've been dreaming of a church where walking through the doors means walking into open arms of brotherhood. I've been dreaming of a church where the people make me feel like I'm home instead of sitting back at a safe distance and saying, "Oh, look--a visitor. Good. I hope he likes our church and starts coming regularly, and our numbers grow, and we get bigger offerings." I've been dreaming of a church where the singing is led by the congregation, by its burning love for its Saviour and Head. I've been dreaming of a church where the members assemble out of a passionate desire to worship and learn of their Lord, where everyone is together because they WANT be there--not because they ought to be. I've been dreaming of a church that is free and knows it. I've been dreaming of a church where there truly is no Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, rich nor poor. I've been dreaming of a church where we're all one. One.

Christ, I know I'm part of your Body, but why do I feel so amputated? And where can I find the rest of Your body? Jesus, where's the Church?

Death: Staring into the Mirror

A helicoptor is flying over the house. At 12:30 AM. It's almost certainly a life flight. Someone's dying right now. Someone's hurting. Someone's crying, someone's praying, begging, pleading with a God they've never talked to before.

So often we reduce death to heaven and hell. And heaven and hell are certainly the most important places in regards to death; they are ultimate . . . for the deceased. But for someone, death is only a mirror and a door to life forever changed. A door through which the living are forced without any answers to life's most bitter questions, nor any guidebook for that which lies beyond. Death changes lives. It's a mirror into which every loving friend, brother or sister, father or mother, even the mere thinking observer must gaze and reflect and respond or react.

There is a certain finality to death which somehow arouses the strongest emotions within every beating heart. My soul, numbed and cooled by books and reactions and conflicts over the preceding months of school, was seared to life last fall by the death of a dear African brother. When I was with Providence in Cameroon, something was dying inside of me--something I knew nothing about. Providence was one of the most passionate people I have ever met. I don't think I ever saw Providence but that he was wearing either a face-covering grin or a solemn scowl of deep thought. He would have nothing to do with the ordinary life. As he walked me down to the square the morning I said goodbye to the town of Sabga at the end of July, it was with sobering sadness but an even fiercer hope that he pledged his love and prayers to me along with his conviction that I would be back. And that morning, the ability to be content and passionate with an ordinary life died inside of me.
When I went back to the states, I could feel that death inside of me as I integrated myself back into ordinary life. My heart would not waste its passions on an ordinary life. The end of summer brought school. My fourth year of college and more of the same ordinary academic pursuits: literature, psychology, language. Nothing thrilled me, nothing broke my heart, nothing infuriated me. I lived a half-smile. I wished upon a heavy heart with eyes bereft of tears. Until Providence died. He was twenty-eight, and I cried for the first time in months. All the other squabbles and conflicts in my ordinary life seemed so small and acidic and I hated it all the more. Providence had been living an extraordinary life, walking everywhere with his smile, his Bible, and his backpack full of tracts. Why take him and leave me? Average, ordinary me, contributing nothing to eternity. I held my face in my hands for a long time, crawled into bed and wished the world would disappear. But I had to go back out and face my excruciatingly ordinary life . . . it was still there and demanding my attention.
I remembered when Providence took me along with him to visit all the sick people at Mbingo hospital. We spent the afternoon in the trama and surgical ward with people who had just lost eyes or limbs and still didn't know if they'd keep their lives. I talked to some of them and saw so much grief and hopelessness. I saw bodies ravaged by accidents and disease. They asked me questions I could not answer and when I'd seen all I could handle I went out and sat on a wall. But Providence was still in there. Still bending over some dying lady's bed and praying. Still talking with families of those in such pitiful conditions. Fervent, compassionate, never-tiring. Driven by love. He came outside and asked me to come in and pray with him for a boy. I went with him, but, humbled and embarassed speechless, could only stand by and let him pray. I begged God to instill in me such a passionate, selfless love as I witnessed in Providence.

And then he was gone. My heart ached. Felt like it was fastened to a wall, but someone was pulling hard and tearing it. I sat with my face buried in my hands looking into that mirror called death. Why should I go on with this ordinary life? I could quit school. Go back to Africa. Live like Providence did, traveling as far as he could, talking to everyone he could. But too many things in this ordinary life tied me down. I looked on, reading emails as I and my other brothers and sisters in Africa grieved Providence's passing. But I could do nothing.

Providence was welcomed into heaven last fall, the place for which he was created, but my heart broke, and I'll never be able to escape the vision of a dark gap left in the hedge. The hole where once an extraordinary life poured passion and energy and everything he could into everyone he could. And his prayer calling me back to Africa.

"The clocks have all stopped, the story's been told
This is your life, so how will it show?

No, you can't pretend that forever
Will never come knocking at your door.

Run through the flames,
Never look back.
What did you think that you came here for?"
--the Afters (One Moment Away)

Impossible

Do I believe in the impossible? Do you? Why not? And why do I assume that you do not? Is it because that's the way we live, talk, act, think? Or rather, have conditioned ourselves to think.

Do we really not believe in the impossible? Then what is it inside of ourselves that draws us to the impossible when others reveal it, speak of it, only to reject it when it becomes too close to real, yet too inexplicable to our well-trained conventions? Could it be the truth?

What is impossible? To some it is very truth itself. What they have not seen, touched, or heard cannot be real. No, in fact, even if they have sensed it, if they cannot explain it, then it cannot be real. It was the senses playing tricks, some bad left-over gruel as Dickens' Scrooge might say.

And so to these people, they would not believe the impossible if they saw it with their very eyes.

Impossible is, in fact then, a state of mind. Fear often controls us more than any other emotion or conviction. We fear the pain, the unpleasantness, the awkwardness. We fear anger and failure and loss. We fear each other, our enemies, and even those we love most. But most of all, we fear the unknown. This is where impossible is born. In the fear of the unknown. We've never seen it, we don't know about it, it doesn't fit into any of our boxes or systems, so naturally we fear. The fear of the unknown is perhaps the strongest of all, because we have no way to fight it. And so we respond the same way my older brothers used to respond to me when I was being obnoxious and annoying: "ignore it and it will go away." So we ignore it. We deny its existence. We deny even its possibility; we label it-- it's impossible. Not reality.

But is it? Really?

"You can't see gravity, but it still exists." A poor example often used to try to prove the existence of God. Trying prove the possibility of a thing commonly thought impossible is different. Still the principle applies. Conventional wisdom tells us that certain things are impossible: a stairway to heaven; a tunnel to China; a true disappearing act; a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people-eater. But what are these labels of impossible based upon? An argument from silence. The fact that we've never seen one. So seriously, what else is called impossible and accepted as such? Suppose it's only because we haven't yet opened the right door?

Now, lest we get carried away and start jumping off buildings in attempts to fly, let me say that I'm not trying to prove the existence or the possibility of anything. I'm just traveling a road of thought.

Let's remember that impossible is actually a reality confirmed by God Himself (Mk 10:27). Jesus' disciples were confused-- worse-- they were filled with consternation and, without doubt, fear itself. "Who can avoid death, if even the richest, most law-abiding, moral man is condemned?" And, yes, Jesus confirms their fears, "With people it is impossible to avoid death." And so there are certain things that are impossible-- under certain conditions. "With people . . . " There is the reality that most of us live in. We all know (in our right minds) that there are many things that are impossible with people. If left only up to people. But that's an if that doesn't have to be reality. You see, in the same sentence Jesus says "but not with God; for all things are possible with God." All things . . . do you believe that? All things. A camel can pass through the eye of a needle. A rich man can enter into the kingdom of God (why doesn't that shock us Americans?). Blind men can see. Cripples can dance. The deaf can hear the mute sing, and dead men can get up and live again. Here. Now. All things. Reality. Do you believe it? Do you live in it? What is impossible to you?

Many people today claim to have witnessed or even experienced miracles. Some people say the age of miracles passed into history with the death of the last New Testament apostle. Some say there never was any miracle. They've never experienced one, but if they did, they would doubt their senses or state of mind instead of recognizing the hand of God. Would you?

What is impossible? What reality do you live in? The reality of all possible? Jesus has something to say about this reality. Mark records a powerful statement just before Jesus casts a demon out of a boy. The disciples tried and failed. The father of the boy was struggling with unbelief. His plea for help was disclaimed with "if you can do anything . . ." "If you can? All things are possible to him who believes." There was authority in those words. Authority from heaven. Authority that changed this man's plea from "if you can do anything" to "I believe! Help my unbelief!" Authority that changed reality. You know the end. A demon who was overpowering to every other human attempt was subdued by the impossibility-destroying power of God. Impossible? Depends. Do you believe?

Not so many things are impossible when you're living in the reality of Divine Power.