Recently I have been involved in several discussions and teachings that relate to each other. At the home school forums I hang out at the someone posed the topic called "Given up on church but not on God? Please share your story." In another thread it was asked, "What is church?" Then at church yesterday, Pastor Keith spoke a bit about the church.
What is the church supposed to be? There is no easy answer to that. I think that every person will have a different answer to that question. We may, in general, come to some sort of agreement of what the church is supposed to be but then the dilemma becomes, How exactly is the church supposed to carry that out?
Let me share a story-
A porcupine stands shivering by himself near a group of other porcupines. The other porcupines are huddling together, staying warm in the cold. The lonely porcupine has a choice to make-does he want to join the others, and get warm, or stay by himself, shivering in the cold where he could even die. The choice seems easy-but one must remember that to be in the group, there will be sticks and pokes, some of which are quite uncomfortable.
People are like that-we stick and poke each other. Sometimes it is quite uncomfortable but it is a part of the relationships. Sometimes, the pokes hurt and are seemingly for no good but in reality, even though the pokes hurt, they serve our greater good. The poke may be something that helps us to grow in our love, in our grace, in our patience or in our faith.
Matthew 27:5 says, "So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself." As Pastor Keith told us yesterday, there are two key words in this verse and they are not "hanged himself." The key words are that he "went away" and isolated himself from others. It was after that isolation that he died.
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