Little flowers

Colossians 1:1-14

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae:  Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

This morning I just want to soak in this passage from St. Paul’s epistle to the Colossians.  I looked outside this morning and saw a blanket of tiny flowers peeking up through the grass, covering it with the beauty of spring, each one beautiful individually but more beautiful in its contribution to the whole.  So it seems in this passage.

The Apostle writes to the church at Colossae.  By what I can tell from this passage, without any other scholarship to fall back on at the moment, he seems to be writing to a church that he did not know.  He has heard of their faith, but he did not plant it.  But he thanks God for these his brothers whom he has not met.  Having heard of them, he loves them, and he prays for their strengthening.  So we might pray for the church throughout the world.  So also might we know that the church throughout the world is praying for us.  And not only the church in the world, but the church throughout time.  The saints who have gone before prayed for us and even now pray for us to the Father, thanking him for us and asking that we may bear fruit in every good work and increase in the knowledge of God.

It isn’t only the adherence to Christian principles that causes the saints to rejoice.  They rejoice also at the hope that the church possesses.  The hope that is laid up for us in heaven, the reward that is promised in the word of truth, the gospel.  The word came to them and to us and we believed it, and it has borne fruit.  Among the fruit that it has borne is the love for all the saints.  This is not merely a celebration of the church working out social justice.  Good works in themselves are not the good fruit of the gospel.  What grows from the gospel is a deep love, not only for God or for those close to us, but for all the saints throughout the world.

The gospel does not fall idly.  Both then and now it is planted and bears fruit.  It grew in St. Paul’s day as believers continued to be added to the church.  It grows now and increases as the gospel is spread to those who have never heard and to those who have heard and never believed.  Even to those who have believed, it continues to increase as the saints continue in their walk with God, trusting him more fully and loving him more completely.  In each of us the hope of the gospel may grow and flourish.

Epaphras brought the gospel to the Colossians and the report of them to Paul and Timothy.  So may we preach the good news to those who have never believed it.  So may we celebrate the work that God has done through the gospel.  So may we spread a good report of the saints to our brothers.

May we be filled with the knowledge of God’s will.  Not simply through rigorous education or the application of theological principles.  Intellect is well and good, but it is spiritual wisdom and understanding that brings the true knowledge of his will.  And having grown in this knowledge, may we walk in it, in a manner worthy of the Lord.  Let us pray for the help and the constant companionship of the Holy Spirit, that we may be fully pleasing to him and bear fruit in every good work.  May our steps be his steps and our works his works.

May we be strengthened, not in manly fortitude, but in godliness according to his glorious might.  Our might is not sufficient, but the strength of God is given to us through Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit.  And this strength is not simply the strength to endure trials and temptations or the patience to wait on the Lord.  It is for endurance and patience with joy.  We might bear many burdens without God if we are given permission to wallow in self-pity now and then.  But in the Lord we are given access to joy.

This flower is inviting a closer examination.  It has caught my eye as a particularly delicate and wonderful bloom.

I am inclined in the midst of trials to turn inward.  To be certain, it is difficult to endure trials.  If it were easy, they wouldn’t be trials.  I too often look at the difficulty that surrounds me and feel overwhelmed by it.  Often I will say things like “I know God is going to do something good, but this is hard.”  Yes, it is hard.  I don’t want to diminish the difficulty.  But where do I look?  In Christ I am given the option to look either at the trial itself or at the promised end.  I can choose to be overwhelmed by the hardship of the moment or I can choose to fix my eyes on what is coming.  Too often the promised end is shrouded in uncertainty, so turning my eyes away from the struggle seems impossible.  In a dense fog I might see what is a few yards ahead, I might see the rough ground ahead of me, but I cannot see the road beyond it.  In those moments I can either focus on the ground or I can focus on the Guide who knows this path, even if it is covered in fog.  Where do I look?  Generally I look at the ground.  But if I look to Christ I can find joy.  I find endurance and patience with joy, because he is with me and leading the way.  And above all, he has promised good.  Even if this life is all trials, the end of the road is full of hope.  Eternal life with God, a blessed inheritance.  That is worth every temporary hardship.

So despite the difficulty of this life, in God’s glorious might we find endurance and patience with joy.  And we give thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints.  I generally think of the Father allowing us to share in the inheritance, or graciously permitting us to share in it.  St. Paul chose a different word, obviously more accurate and infinitely more wonderful.  I lack the vocabulary to describe it.  Qualified.  The Father has taken us and made us into something worthy of receiving the kingdom.  Thanks be to God.

We are no longer citizens of this world, but we have been given a new citizenship in the kingdom of light.  We have been transferred there already.  We await the final fulfillment, but even now it is where we belong.  We live now as sojourners, knowing that our home is elsewhere.  Like Israel during the exile, we look to the home that is prepared for us.  Our roots are not in this world, our hope is not in this kingdom.  When the exile ends, we return to our home and rejoice, even if we had been high ranking officials under the king.  No good things in a foreign land can compare to the inheritance in the land where we belong.  We belong in the kingdom of the Son.  Every road is leading us there.

Glory to God the Father, who has sanctified us and made us his own.  Glory to God the Son, Jesus Christ, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.  Glory to God the Holy Spirit, who dwells with us and strengthens us to endure all things with joy.  To him be all honor, power, and dominion, now and forever.  Amen.

When I awake

Psalm 17

Hear my plea of innocence, O LORD;

   give heed to my cry;

   listen to my prayer, which does not come from lying lips.

Let my vindication come forth from your presence;

   let your eyes be fixed on justice.

Weigh my heart, summon me by night,

   melt me down; you will find no impurity in me.

I give no offense with my mouth as others do;

   I have heeded the words of your lips.

My footsteps hold fast to the ways of your law;

   in your paths my feet shall not stumble.

I call upon you, O God, for you will answer me;

   incline your ear to me and hear my words.

Show me your marvelous loving-kindness,

   O Savior of those who take refuge at your right hand

   from those who rise up against them.

Keep me as the apple of your eye;

   hide me under the shadow of your wings,

From the wicked who assault me,

   from my deadly enemies who surround me.

They have closed their heart to pity,

   and their mouth speaks proud things.

They press me hard,

   now they surround me,

   watching how they may cast me to the ground,

Like a lion, greedy for its prey,

   and like a young lion lurking in secret places.

Arise, O LORD; confront them and bring them down;

   deliver me from the wicked by your sword.

Deliver me, O LORD, by your hand

   from those whose portion in life is this world;

Whose bellies you fill with your treasure,

   who are well supplied with children

   and leave their wealth to their little ones.

But at my vindication I shall see your face;

   when I awake, I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.

I am not a righteous man.

Deliver me, O Lord, from those whose portion in life is this world.  Deliver me from the longing for a belly full of treasure, from the longing for children, from the urge to secure an inheritance for my namesake.  Lead me away from the pursuit of my momentary cravings and my deepest desires.

Turn my eyes from those things that I do not have.  When I am tired, may I never dwell on the work I do for long hours and little pay.  May I never wallow in loneliness or a perception of disconnectedness.  Let me forget the dreams of what I could be doing.

Although I have dreamed of the family I ought to have by now, the wife, the children, and the house of our own, I would leave that dream behind.  Help me, Lord, not to live in the life that I have only wished for.

May I find joy in the joy of others.  May their happiness never become an occasion for my despair.

Wipe from my mind the wrongs that have been done to me.  Help me to forgive.  Teach me not to regret those things I never received.  Show me the falsehood of the lies on which I have feasted.  Lord, help me to forgive.

Take from me the wrongs that I have done, the cruelties and injustices that I have committed.  Father, help me to forgive.  Help me to accept forgiveness.

Show me what it means to walk with you.  Lead me away from collecting knowledge or prestige or a catalog of works as if by them I were buying your favor.  Help me to trust you, Lord.  Help my unbelief.

Nothing in this life is sufficient to meet my deepest needs, as much as I might chase after them all.  What I have, what I do not have; no change in these would make a difference.  What sin I have grievously committed, time after time, and what has been committed against me; these do not alter who I am in you.  If all in my life were different and all my dreams had come true, if all of the past could be changed and all of the future laid out at my direction, it still would not suffice.

I am not a righteous man.  But my Savior is righteous, and he has made me his son and granted me his righteousness.  So on that day, by his blood and in his name, I will be vindicated.  I will see your face when I awake.  Then Lord, then Father, I will be satisfied.

But you do see

Psalm 10

Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?

    Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;

    let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.

For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,

    and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.

In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;

    all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”

His ways prosper at all times;

    your judgments are on high, out of his sight;

    as for all his foes, he puffs at them.

He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;

    throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”

His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;

    under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.

He sits in ambush in the villages;

    in hiding places he murders the innocent.

His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;

    he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;

he lurks that he may seize the poor;

    he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.

The helpless are crushed, sink down,

    and fall by his might.

He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,

    he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”

Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;

    forget not the afflicted.

Why does the wicked renounce God

    and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?

But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,

    that you may take it into your hands;

to you the helpless commits himself;

    you have been the helper of the fatherless.

Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;

    call his wickedness to account till you find none.

The Lord is king forever and ever;

    the nations perish from his land.

O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;

    you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear

to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,

    so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.

1 John 2:1

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Psalm 10 is a cry to God for justice.  The Psalmist draws a portrait of the wicked man that oppresses the poor, seeks his own way, and scoffs at God.  It is all too easy to call up the memory of people who fit the description, to put faces to every characteristic described.  Sin is still rampant in the world, and the poor still cry out for mercy.  With the Psalmist we can cry out for God to see, and with him we can declare with confidence that God does see and will do good for those in need.

While that could be a lengthy blog post in itself, and most likely will be at some point, I am inclined rather to focus on a different aspect tonight.  In today’s readings we also have a reading from 1 John.  Reading these two together cast a different light for me.

Too often I am drawn to examine myself in view of a psalm about the unrighteous and to find that I would fit in well with them.  I am attracted to sin, I lose sight of righteousness in favor of my desires in the moment.  I am weak, I am judgmental, I am prone to bouts of frustration and an utter lack of mercy.  I fail to exercise self-control.  I do not show kindness.  I am rude or proud or self-loathing.  I look to myself for answers and do not seek God.  I fail to trust God’s provision or to truly believe in his kindness.  Although I am a son, I act as if I were still an enemy of God.

This is no surprise to anyone.

But there are two things that stand out to me from these passages tonight.  The first is from the psalm.  We have a list of actions committed by the unrighteous, but we have more than that.  We are also given an insight into the mind of the wicked man.  He is not going on sinning out of weakness or a simple failure to be entirely righteous.  He has set himself against God in his mind and in his heart.  He justifies his actions by saying “God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it” and “You will not call to account.”  He has renounced God.

This is important.  It isn’t the mindset of one who fails, but of one who is in utter rebellion.  Even when shown the truth, he will still go on in rebellion because he does not believe that God judges sin.  As far as he is concerned, there will be no ultimate consequences for his actions.  And the most important bit: There will be no consequences because God doesn’t care.

The second:  In 1 John we have two wonderful statements.  The first is that the apostle was indeed writing with the purpose of leading people away from sin.  Righteousness is important.  We should not go on sinning as if God doesn’t care what we do.  But immediately after this statement is this promise and assurance:  “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”  When we fail to measure up, Jesus is on our side.

So on to a comparison.  On the one hand we have a man in utter rebellion, doing as he pleases because God isn’t watching.  On the other we have a man repeatedly failing, but assured of forgiveness because God is watching.

It is good to strive for righteousness.  It is essential.  John goes on to say that we ought to walk in the same way that Jesus walked.  It is good to root out unrighteousness in our own lives.  I might pray with the psalmist “call his wickedness to account until you find none,” speaking only of myself, praying that God might bring to light all the ways in which I do not live as Jesus lived.

What is not good is to find the ways in which I fail and then to stop.  That leads only to a sense of despair, in which I see my sin and cannot see past it to what God has done.  Self-examination in this area is good, because it can bring to light those hidden sins or repeated sins that plague our lives.  And once God has brought them out, we can bring them to God to forgive.  We can accept his forgiveness, being assured of the righteousness of his Son.  We can find healing as we continue to walk with him.

We must not hate ourselves simply for being weak.  We are not lined up with the wicked simply because we fail.  We have already been forgiven, and we are guaranteed forgiveness in Christ.  Only let us not slip into rebellion, using our liberty as an excuse to sin.  But let us humbly seek out the Righteous One, living as he lived, and confessing our failures to the God who sees and loves.

From the belly of the fish

Jonah 2:1-9

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying,

“I called out to the Lord, out of my distress,

    and he answered me;

out of the belly of Sheol I cried,

    and you heard my voice.

For you cast me into the deep,

    into the heart of the seas,

    and the flood surrounded me;

all your waves and your billows

    passed over me.

Then I said, ‘I am driven away

    from your sight;

yet I shall again look

    upon your holy temple.’

The waters closed in over me to take my life;

    the deep surrounded me;

weeds were wrapped about my head

    at the roots of the mountains.

I went down to the land

    whose bars closed upon me forever;

yet you brought up my life from the pit,

    O Lord my God.

When my life was fainting away,

    I remembered the Lord,

and my prayer came to you,

    into your holy temple.

Those who pay regard to vain idols

    forsake their hope of steadfast love.

But I with the voice of thanksgiving

    will sacrifice to you;

what I have vowed I will pay.

    Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

This was the prayer of Jonah from the belly of the whale.  It is a prayer of thanksgiving, of rejoicing in the kindness of the Lord.  He had fled from God, disobeyed the command, and eventually tossed into a stormy sea where he sunk to his inevitable death.  From this the Lord saved him by sending a whale to swallow him up, and so Jonah rejoiced.  But this prayer was lifted from the belly of a whale.

I too often sink into despair, waiting for everything to be perfect before I feel I can rejoice or give thanks to the Lord.  Jonah looks ahead to the time when he will see the temple again, but he does not wait until he is in the temple to give thanks.  He prays when the outcome, from a human standpoint, still seems uncertain.  Had I been in the situation, I imagine I would have thought “Wonderful.  I’ve been thrown into the sea, I nearly drowned, and now on top of it I’ve been swallowed by a whale.  What do you have for me next?”  But Jonah sees the Lord’s salvation while his situation is still dark and he gives thanks.

“Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love” the prophet says.  My natural inclination is to turn inward, to examine myself and discover what idols I still cling to.  To be sure, there are some.  But instead of dwelling on this examination, which I am certain will never end, I will look at the promise in this verse.  By turning it around, we come up with the statement “Those who pay regard to the Lord have the hope of steadfast love.”

Steadfast love.  The hope of steadfast love.  What does this mean?  What does it look like?  Well, it looks like when you’re running from God, when you’re disobeying his commands and are sinking into the sea and on the point of death, when you cry out to him he will send a whale to save you.  Some people might read the story of Jonah and think it’s ridiculous because that isn’t how any sort of whale biology works and surely he would have been digested in the time he spent in its belly.  If that’s the case, it just makes the story more impressive to me.  Because that means that God’s love is so steadfast that when Jonah cried out to him, God made up some creature to go and swallow him before he could die.  He is so kind that he will do something absolutely ridiculous to save his child.

This isn’t very surprising if you read the rest of the bible.  God is constantly saving his people in absurd ways.  Parting the Red Sea with a strong wind so that the Israelites can walk through on dry ground, water from the rock, manna that only lasts a day, unless it’s the Sabbath in which case it lasts two days, a storm of quail that fly through at perfect snatching height, looking at a bronze snake to be saved from snake bites, Joshua’s entire campaign, Gideon’s laughably small army, and the list goes on.  Even Jesus’ miracles were sometimes pretty hilarious.  “He put mud on my eyes, and then I could see.”  Really?  Mud?

Of course, the most ridiculous of all was the ultimate saving act.  Jesus, the glorious king, was tortured and shamed and killed.  And then, of course, he rose from the dead.  It isn’t simply idle words when Paul says that the resurrection is foolishness to the Gentiles.  It’s absolutely crazy, but it happened, and that seems to be perfectly consistent with how God always works.

I’ve theorized, typically when talking about the book of Judges, that God is always trying to tell us that he loves us as loudly as he possibly can.  He doesn’t do it in small ways that we can easily pass off as accidents.  Jesus doesn’t go heal Lazarus before he dies, even though he could have just said the word from where he was and Lazarus would have been healed.  He waits until he’s dead and then goes and resurrects him.  Go big or go home.

God is always telling his people “I love you.  This much.”  Even if you shut your eyes, it’s still pretty hard to miss.  Because his salvation is rarely subtle.  If it were subtle, you might think you’d done it yourself or simply had good luck.  What’s the good of that?  That would be the equivalent of sitting down to write your fiancée a wartime love letter, then being satisfied with “Hello, I hope everything’s well.  Sincerely, Your Husband if I make it out of this alive” and figuring that she probably got the point.  But God isn’t satisfied with such half measures.  When he shows his people his love he absolutely gushes, like a seventeen year old would be poet who hasn’t seen his girlfriend for at least twelve hours.

What’s more, his love is steadfast.  He isn’t fickle.  He isn’t capricious or easily offended.  He isn’t surprised by our failings and he doesn’t shun us for messing up.  He saved Jonah, who had outright refused to do what he was told and instead got in a boat headed very far in the opposite direction.  Jonah ran away because he hated those people in Nineveh so much that he wanted them all, man and beast, to die.  Did God write Jonah off and send someone else?  No.  He followed him with a storm and then saved him with a miracle fish that shouldn’t exist.  And I’m worried because I was sarcastic?

We are not in danger of losing God’s love.  He isn’t waiting for us to sin so that he can kick us out of the kingdom.  He hasn’t accepted us simply on a technicality because we happened to believe in Jesus.  He loves us with a steadfast love, and he does it loudly.  He is quick to forgive our sins, because he wants us to be with him.  Jonah was sinking in the water, and we know that means he had a window of about five minutes between being thrown overboard and being saved before he drowned.  When I say quick, understand “the length of time between death closing in and death having closed in”.  He doesn’t give it a couple of weeks to see if we really mean it this time.  He forgives us now and when we mess up again in a couple of weeks, he forgives us then too.  Immediately.

Jonah knew God well enough to know that he was being saved.  He didn’t doubt God’s salvation.  I constantly doubt God’s salvation, which is why the belly of the whale looks so dark.  I don’t have the answer to why I can’t see his salvation when it will be incredibly obvious later.  I don’t know why I always seem to forget that God does love me, and enough to save me miraculously.  But I know that he does.  I know that I can hope in his steadfast love.

Lord Jesus, help me to remember.

That they may all be one

John 17:20-21

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Today is Maundy Thursday, when the Church throughout the world remembers Jesus instating the sacrament of Communion, the washing of the disciples’ feet, and the prayers of our Lord in the garden before his arrest.  For some of us, tonight is the first of many long, beautiful, and sometimes sweetly agonizing services in which we enter into the suffering of the Christ and in a small way walk through it with him.  In a few days we will celebrate his resurrection, his victory over death itself which he will share with us as his brothers and sisters.

I could stop here and encourage you to dwell on these facts, but I know that most of my readers will be doing that under much better guidance than mine over the next few days.  So instead, I will take a few moments to dwell on the Lord’s prayer in the garden in light of our times.

I have made it very clear that I am simply a layman, that I hold no authority and make no claims to it.  But the prayer quoted above has burned my heart for years, and I often find it difficult not to be prescriptive when I talk about church unity.  So please bear with me and forgive me if I step outside of what is appropriate.  In the hopes of not doing this, I will try to focus my thoughts as much as possible on myself.

This year is one of the rare years in which the East and the West celebrate this feast at the same time (Easter, Pascha, Resurrection Day, whatever you want to call it).  I am delighted that we celebrate them together this year, but it also highlights to me the fact that this occurrence is rare.  Nearly a thousand years ago the East and the West split.  This division is beginning to be mended.  Around five hundred years ago the Church in the West shattered, and the splintering continues.  We divided over ideological differences, political differences, and sometimes very slight doctrinal differences.  I am not going to place blame in this post, though my friends have heard me at various times lash out at one or another party involved in the split.

It cannot be denied that Jesus desires unity among his people.  It cannot be denied that the world looks at us as representatives of Christ, even if we do not look at ourselves as such.  When we sow division, when we perpetuate division, even when we are satisfied with division, the world sees this and forms an opinion.  Generally the opinion is that Christians are no different from any other group of people, willing to let petty differences separate us and drive us into warring factions.  It says to the world that God did not send Jesus.

This fact in itself is devastating.

Many of us come from fractured families.  One parent or another may be estranged, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins may be out of the picture.  Not because of death, but because we simply do not speak anymore.  Personally, I haven’t spoken to most of my extended family in about ten years, and it isn’t likely to change in the near future.  This isn’t something I’m happy about.  At best it’s something I’ve learned to cope with.  But as time goes on, the pain of being divided lessens until eventually it doesn’t hurt.  It is simply the way things are.  And since we have lived our lives without one another for so long, when we do speak there simply isn’t much for us to say to one another.  We have truly become separate, we have become entirely different families, despite the fact that we share a common blood.

For most Christians, the division in the Church isn’t something to mourn.  It isn’t something we’re even aware of, often.  But we reveal ourselves by asking questions of other Christians like “What religion are you?”  We fail to recognize our commonality.  We don’t even recognize it when it is pointed out.  Or we simply don’t care.  In some cases we even celebrate our division, being glad that we don’t have to share a cup with those sinners that refuse to have guitars in worship, or who try to make sense of the mystery of the Sacrament by describing it in words other than those that we use.  Our divided family gives us a sense of pleasure, knowing that we are right and our brother is wrong.  We focus on the right and wrong, completely ignoring the fact that he is our brother.

I am not proposing an overall solution to the unity problem.  That isn’t my job.  Though if I can offer a solution that I know will be approved by every authority to begin to address this problem, it is that we must all pray for unity.  The Lord prayed for unity as one of his last acts in the world, while he was tormented to the point of sweating blood.  We can join him in praying.  And as we pray for the unity of the Church, we can also pray for the Lord to mold our own hearts, to make us truly desire this unity.

This was a very long introduction to the personal reflection.  So let me turn my attention away from the description of problem to the ways in which I perpetuate the problem.

Gossip.  Disrespect.  Lack of empathy.  Self-righteousness.  Considering myself better than others.  Keeping record of wrongs.

I grew up in the church.  Given my particular household, I grew up in the midst of all the politics and divisions that exist in any group of churches.  I saw all the dirty laundry.  At times, I was the recipient of the hurt that a church can cause.  More significantly, my family received it while I watched.  I have seen the damage that a church can do, and my heart has been broken.  For years I refused to be involved in the denomination, and any references to it made me disproportionately angry.  While I can now, thanks to the grace and healing of God, worship with people from this denomination, there is still a division there.  They aren’t the ones keeping it alive.

When I was younger and more arrogant, I threw myself into theology.  Being blessed with reason I formed opinions based on what I read.  I put so much weight on my opinions that I insisted other people agree with me.  I even went so far as to tell some that any other opinion was not actually Christianity.  (If any of you are reading this and I have not seen you to apologize, I am deeply sorry.)  Since growing up, I have seen my error.  But now I have a new set of opinions, and my inclination is still to believe that my angle is correct.  When I sit at table, when I share the cup, with those who hold a different view, it is difficult for me to set aside the fact that we do not see things the same way.  I still believe that I am approaching things correctly and they are not.  I want to insist that they see things from my angle.  It is difficult for me to accept that what has been important for me in my journey with and toward Christ has not been important for them.

I am prone to ranting.  I will air my frustration about one group of Christians to my friends without concern for loving my brother.  I spend more time degrading my brother than I do dignifying him.  And yet I insist on patience from others when they bring up the logs in my eye.

While in my heart I long for unity, in my actions I drive the wedges deeper.  Even when I am among my brothers and sisters who worship our Lord through different words, different rituals, or a different understanding, I am often not with them.  We worship next to each other, but not together.

And so, for the sake of the Body, I must pray.  Pray for the unity of the Church, but also fervently that God would mold my heart to truly desire it.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.