August 27, 2008
Always Learning
Much of my Grandma’s life was spent in rural southeastern Colorado on a ranch she and Granddad homesteaded. Neighbors were few and far between but a handful of folks gathered each Sunday in the community one room schoolhouse for church. Grandma, a self-taught and life-long student of the Bible, was the teacher/leader of the group – that is unless there happened to be a visiting circuit preacher in the neighborhood. When Grandma was nearing the end of her life she was confined to a nursing home and wasn’t often alert or coherent. I decided that reading Scripture aloud to her might cut through the fog and bring her a measure of comfort and peace. One day while reading in the book of John she stopped me and asked, “Now what do you suppose he means by that?” OK I thought, was she being the consummate Bible student to her last breath, or was she in her teacher mode and testing my knowledge of the Word? Having learned from the best I said, “Well Grandma, I’m not sure. Tell me what you think?”
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Gail;
----Ambiguity surrounds us more thickly than we would be comfortable knowing. The way you handled the possibilities of your grandmother’s comment demonstrates one of the few legs a relationship must stand upon. I am sure, when she asked, you had some idea of what John meant, and if not, I bet you could have quickly pieced one together. But you understood her question was more elemental to the conversation than was something you could have offered. Although not knowing her direction, you probed for it rather than seizing an opportunity to serve yourself some stature.
-----Paul tells us we are to build up one another and to please each other. That requires knowing each other, respecting each other’s personality, and honoring each other’s peculiarities. Without this attitude we use others as paint to splay our self portrait upon the canvas of relationships. We expect church to become like us, act like us, think like us, sound like us. But church is really a conglomeration of many personalities. It must be approached with proper reticence, allowing the godly traits of all the people to come forth and paint the portrait of the gathering upon the canvas of relationship. If there is unity in that portrait, then it shows the Lord.
----Too many leaders whine that some fundamental purpose must be projected upon the church. They contend for their positions of importance, their special seats from which God plans to express their familiarities through the church’s character. If the church does not move in their chosen direction, they see no service for Jesus. For like the rest of us, they perceive most the service they are best able to do, hardly being cognizant of any other. To this mind, the world is made of the familiar. And anything else almost exists. To it unity is in the familiar. And the leader brings this mentality to the front seats of the church.
-----But much more exists in the unfamiliar than in the familiar. Especially with God, and of the richness in Christ the Lord. Unity does not proceed from the familiar. Unity proceeds from faith in the face of the unfamiliar, having the familiar already in pocket. It proceeds from searching the unfamiliar for what there needs some care. It grows from the accepting nature of the Lord. Unity is not an enforced character, it is an allowed character. It rises naturally. It does not seek to draw grandma into my conversation; it searches grandma to find hers. Then it searches both for crossing trails. With insensitivity, ambiguity is opportunity for a self-portrait. But by sensitivity it becomes unity.
Love,
Steve Corey
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