Welcome to....
How many of us have seen the sign, Welcome to.... wherever you are going? Most of us see the sign but we don't really feel welcome. It's just a sign, not something or someone that has the ability to actually make you feel welcome. Someone who can help you get through a situation, to help you find the way.
Case in point, I'm traveling this week to training in Indianapolis, and when I got here the sign said Welcome to Indy, but it didn't help me find my way to the hotel I was staying at or help me feel comfortable in this new city. When I got to the hotel it was the same story. Welcome to Sonesta, but I still feel a little lost in this new community to me. In fact, I had a little incident in my room yesterday, I used the restroom and as I went to flush the toilet and rather than the water going down it started to rise up to the brim of the toilet. Now, this was not from a number 2, so the response from the flush was completely unexpected. But it didn't stop at the brim of the toilet, it started to overflow and then it kept overflowing. Like so much water coming out of the toilet, I couldn't believe it. I was trying to figure out what I had done wrong that had caused this issue. I started to clean up the water on the floor and while cleaning I hit the handle to flush the toilet again, but this time there was no place in the toilet for the water to go, so all of it just poured out onto the floor. I felt like such an idiot at this point and I was too embarrassed to call the front desk for help. While they had welcomed me they didn't make me feel as though they would be there for my mistakes and to help me through my issues without laughing at me.
This is how the church is. We put up signs that say welcome to The Edge. We tell people we are "on the edge together" but what we are really telling everyone we are all on an edge, but you have your edge and I have my edge and they are different and you cant help me with my edge and I dont know if I want to help you with your edge. Thats not what the Bible says. we are called to do life with one another Acts 2:44 "All the believers were united and shared everything". We dont share everything, most of us we dont share anything, and as a church were not united. Just look at politics we are devided either blue or red or you could be a masker or an unmasker. Now I should be clear, this scripture is not refering to being united in their belief of poltics or masks but in their faith in Christ and to doing life together. We are so afriad to do life together because people will hear about all the toilet water that is on our floor and they will laugh at us, and then most of us dont know what we believe about Christ and we are afraid to ask questions so we dont come off looking like we dont read Bible, so we just dont talk to on another at church. That is not doing life together or being on the Edge together, that is doing life all alone.
God does not want us doing life alone. He wants us to do life together and to ask all the questions so we can get a complete understanding of who Jesus is and what he has done for you. This is what we need to do, we need to tear down the walls we have built that separate us and start loving those who ask questions and have a mess in their lives. We used to have a line as a church "We are a Church for people who dont do Church" we need to get back to that. Lets be a place again that people who dont go to church want to come to one of our gatherings because they can be a mess and ask all the questions they want and still feel loved and not worry about being laughed at. Lets love as Christ loves us.
PM