I've been donig a lot of thinking about realtionships and life and what makes life good and what makes life hard and what makes life painful. Today, as I was walking to my drawing class in the beautiful warmth of spring I was thinking about how I am spending my time here, what I am doing these days and I thought to myself, "Am I doing anything that I really love?" Are the things in my life reflective of what I really love, things I celebrate, things that feel like breath in my lungs. I'm not sure.
I was thinking about art and what that means. I have been thinking that art is this beautiful tool we have been given to tell other people what we love. And sometimes that love is expressed through what really hurts or even something as simple as the way red and green speak when they sit next to each other.
And I've been thinking about church. I am working on a project for my church history class and I've been sorting through decisions about what church means to me, what to say about it, how to use all that I have learned in the last eight weeks about church and put it into something that says what church is. In my searching, I am realizing that church has all sorts of layers and all sorts of faces-- everyone has their own idea and experience and it means many things. Is is poolitical? Is it organized? Is it instutional? Is it realtional? Is it personal? Is it a crutch? Is it a waste? Is it an excuse for something else? Is it a club? Is it an extracurricular?
I have taken a little bit of time off from church these past few weeks to sort through all these ideas of church and sabbath and the more I think about all of this and my life, I think that church must be a place that we learn to love and we are helping others love more and differently. Church ought to be a place where people are intensely involved in what it means to love. I think that statement gets all tangled up in relgious terms like serving, giving, missionaries, Jesus, God is love.... on and on. I think in the church we have gotten so lost on what it really means just to love. It is walking down the street and enjoying the sun on the face, breathing in the clouds against the blue of the sky, the red of the flower waving like a flag in the wind.
The sort of people that I want to be around are those that make me love a little more and alittle better. I want to people around people who say, "look at that.... Isn't that lovely?" I want to be around people who make me love God in new ways, around people who saturate me with what it means to enjoy this world that our Father has given us.
So I think, most of all, if the church is supposed to be an incarnation of God, it ought to be a place where we help other see what we love. Nothing more. Anything else seems periferal and irrelevant. Wastes of breaths. Maybe being a poor steward of what God has given us less about money and more about energy-- are we spending time in the church doing anything besides loving?
Just a question.
What about me? Is my life marked by what I truly love?
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