The time Has Come

Have you read “Through the Looking Glass,” by Lewis Carroll? It is a crazy story full of weird characters, each carrying on strange conversations with others. Much of what they say makes absolutely no sense at all, such as –

Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Or,

The sun was shining on the sea
Shining with all his might
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright
And this was odd because it was
The middle of the night

All that they say is interesting, but strange, until the Walrus and the Carpenter were walking beside each other and the Walrus began to speak . . .

The time has come, the Walrus said
To talk of many things
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings

Now this makes sense. "The time has come to talk . . . " To speak of eternity. To say there is more to life than the present. To grasp the understanding that if we do not have God in our lives we are empty and vain. We eat today, but tomorrow we hunger again. We struggle with kids and coworkers, and tomorrow is a repeat of today. There has to be more than the day to day. There has to be reason, a greater reason than to be born, grow up, marry, have children, grow old and die.

There has to be more! And there is . . . Jesus Christ!

John 3:16 is more than a poster someone holds up at a ball game. It is truth . . . For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Here's THE Question

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?"
"Is that your own idea," Jesus asked, "or did others talk to you about me?"
"Am I a Jew?" Pilate replied. "It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?"
Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place."
"You are a king, then!" said Pilate.
Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."
"What is truth?" Pilate asked.
John 18:33-38a

Two Things

I intend to live forever -- so far, so good.

And . . .

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

Field of Dreams

One of the things that bothers me most about the church of today is our insatiable appetite for buildings. We have the idea that a building will take the place of going into all the world. We erect our structures with the "Field of Dreams" mentality . . . "if we build it they will come." It just isn't so. Our congregation is getting ready to waste $2.5 million dollars on a new auditorium. Our claim is that it will help us reach out better. The truth is it will help us SHUT out better. Rather than erecting a building that attracts we seem to be building citadels, which cause people to shun us, as we shut them out. If our claim is that we will reach out better why are we not reaching out now? The truth is, we do not reach out to our community now, and we have a nice building. What would make us more apt to reach out if we had a new building?

For some reason we are trying to build mega-churches to take the place of our commission. The mega-church will, we hope, erase most of our guilt feelings for not going into all the world, because it will appear that we are doing something, after all we have a big congregation. Of course the members will not be there because we have reached into the community and served them so that they saw our light and glorified our Father in heaven, but rather they will be, as they are now, transplants from other congregations in the area. We are reaching desperately few from our community, and we are failing miserably in serving our fellow men, and we have lost our way in following the footsteps of Jesus Christ, but we have a nice building, and we will soon have a better one.

I'm sure God is proud of that!