November 20, 2006
Visual Busyness
I’ve been in kitchens where every inch of the refrigerator door is covered with magnets, photos and shopping lists. Not that the items aren’t interesting, but it’s easy to think in terms of ‘bulletin board’, rather than refrigerator. There are times when the front of the church auditorium reminds me of a refrigerator door. The large lighted silver cross hanging over the baptistery simply becomes the non-descript backdrop for the props on the stage. There are posters, banners, drapes, drums, music stands, stools, speakers, amplifiers, electrical cords, keyboards, guitars, music stands, dangling projectors and projection screens…and that’s all before the praise team members and preachers take their places. Looking through the entire menagerie it’s easy to lose sight of the cross. As the church tries to be relevant to the world, I wonder if there aren’t times in which we also lose sight of Christ.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
----"Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'" (Mat 7:22-23) I love those verses! They get used by so many who see something differently than does someone else. But the fact that Jesus stated them tells us two things: 1) they are valid, 2) Jesus will make the final measure of those who fit the description, not us.
----The first truth is the one I first concern myself with. Busyness can lead to just that, mere busyness. And whether or not there is a point at which busyness itself becomes the reason for yet more busyness rather than more service to the Lord, the perpetual rebirth of more upon more busyness has always been a caution sign to me. The resulting confusion can lead to misdirection.
----That is why I have so many days in which my couch receives the warmth of my backside. Sometimes it is in response to confusion, but mostly, I will finally rebel against too much busyness and fall off the other side of the tight-wire. One can become just as lost in the reverence of solitude and quite as he can in the confusion of bustle.
----"For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks." (Lk 6:45) "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit." (Mat 7:17) I think if we ever became so busy, or so reclusive, that we expect Christ to be about what we do, we would be experiencing a "but Lord, Lord" moment. It is not our thinginess that Jesus wants, though He seems to extract much from it. He wants our sincerety - our effort to be like Him in heart and mind. And from that, in action.
----He told us many things that reveal the way he thought and felt. They all seem to sum up to the simple equating of love with good attention given others - especially God. (Jesus would probably say, "If you have to ask who's to say what good is, then you are not the one to say.") I would speculate that when our busyness extends from that equation, it might be better defined as frantic service of love.
----But the mindset of love must be there. The reason for the bustle must be what actually edifies, comforts, and encourages others, what attracts the ears of the lost to the message of the gospel, and what makes the heart of the Lord happy. If we think that what we do does all this merely because we somehow imagine it does, or want it to, we may be moving in the direction of a "but Lord, Lord" experience.
----Our hearts and minds must be real before the Lord. For that to occur we must at all times offer the truncating of our own understanding to the light of the Word as Abraham was willing to offer Issac. We must always hold our thinking under the magnifying glass of self-examination according to the defined standards of the Word of God. Those continually refined thoughts then put into action towards others (especially towards God) will demonstrate the sincerety of our hearts' retained sight of the Lord.
Post a Comment