July 05, 2010
Holiday Closure
This year the 4th of July fell on a Sunday, so government offices will be closed on Monday, July 5th to give employees their holiday. Interestingly a woman asked if our church would be cancelling worship services on Sunday the 4th in honor of Independence Day. I would like to say the thought is absurd, but the reality is that 20 years ago who would have ever thought we’d be cancelling Sunday and Wednesday evening services. Sadly, holiday closures for churches are in the realm of possibility.
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Gail;
-----Only church buildings can be closed. The body of Christ is never closed. Once a week I meet with a small handful of men on Wednesday morning for Bible study. The fact we all come from different “churches” has no bearing upon our meeting to build one another up in the Lord. And across the cities throughout the regions of the countries in the world countless others are meeting at any hour of all days doing the same. What is on the minds and in the hearts of these people can not be closed by the locks and keys of church buildings. And beyond that, even, my own heart and mind can not be closed matter not who I am with or that I might just as well be alone.
-----What could be sad is that there are not a great number who also desire to meet together more purposefully. If there were, then the keys would be forced to unlock the doors of facilities for need of places in which to meet. Then the public awareness of those meetings would return. But the up building within the meetings would remain the same. Only the awareness of them and the number of people built up by them would change. And these are changes our world could use.
-----But civic duty and public character are not intangible elements mandated for us by authorities who design the nature of our social intercourse. At least not yet. Albeit, they are pictured for us by social engineers and posted in the public square to effect us as much as the striped rods were to effect the sheep before which Jacob laid them. (Gen. 30:37-43) And the larger portion of the Lord’s body does spend much time feeding at the entertainment troughs of the world’s intelligentsia where the unbelieving masses also feed. Social engineers portray their norms and standards for us upon our TV and movie theater screens and through our radio speakers. How often do their offered images portray faith, hope, prayer, and worshipful gathering as a fundamental element of the healthy human life? That’s right, less than rarely. When they do, the portrayals are either negative, or they are representative of no more than placating emotional salves meant to have little effect upon decision making processes.
-----We are tempted to reflect upon better days in the past when church life more shaped the social atmosphere in which we lived. And such reflection would be correct to a degree, but not in entirety. For even one-hundred-fifty years ago and before there were the operas, the bar rooms, the town dances, social clubs, and libraries laying striped rods before the emotional and mental propagations of the people. The church has never existed without competition for the hearts and minds of the folk. But there truly was a day, even in my life, in which the imagery of “the good life” was about church attendance, and “the better the life” the more was presumed to be that attendance. It is certainly an element of the social atmosphere I miss.
-----The reality is that we have been propagating public character far too long before the striped rods of the social engineers. They are now near to owning society. But they will never own me. I do enjoy some of the tripe they make for entertainment, but I scoff at the striped rods they embed within it. Although I somewhat lament the loss of the Sunday night and intermittent weekly meetings, to the best of my ability my response is to present the new life made in me to whomever I am with however it might fit the situation. That way, the church door might never be totally closed in my life.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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