"Christianity 101: The Church"

This has been a particularly hard weekend for several of our FCC families. The grandmother of two of our Kids Club children passed away this weekend; Ross’ sister-in-law, Carey, passed away; and my own brother, Lindsay, passed away. I also know that parents of two different sets of my own friends passed away in the past week as well.

All of that puts a great number of important things into an extremely crucial clarity to me. As I’ve mentioned to various people several times over the past few days, it reminds me rather strikingly of the need to appreciate every day that we have on this earth together, since we have no guarantees that we’ll have another one tomorrow. Some days are warm and sunny and joyful, and some days are cold and rainy and depressing, but all of them are days in this world nonetheless -- and all things considered, right now, I’d much rather have a depressing day with my brother in it than a fun day without him in it.

So maybe spend a moment and think about the people in your life -- your loved ones, your neighbors, those people that you’re frustrated with at the moment, everyone around you that you could be helping, etc. If you knew that the person you’re with right now, or the checkout clerk at the grocery store that you talked with this morning, or the family member that you refuse to talk to this evening because they need to apologize before you can forgive them -- if you knew that those people were going to be gone tomorrow, then would it change how you would interact with them today?

Now... do you know that they won’t be gone tomorrow?

I’m not being morbid, but rather being logical. None of us knows what tomorrow will bring, so none of us should waste the time and opportunities that we have today to do good. So hug your spouse or your children and tell them you truly, sincerely love them. Reach out to that person that you keep meaning to reach out to. Smile and genuinely interact with the shopkeeper like he’s a human being with feelings. Move past that thing that that other person did that one time all those months ago and forgive them, whether they ever figure out that they need to apologize or not.

As we talked about this week in our sermon about the nature of what a “church” is, we’re reminded that at its core, a church isn’t an institution or a country club or a political entity -- it’s a family of people who have moved from death to life together, and have become related to one another by blood. We’re meant to be connected to one another, not separate (and that’s why God made cars to travel in, phones to call one another with, and mailboxes to provide little notes like this from one another). So long as it’s a day of the week whose name ends in the suffix “-day,” I encourage you to make the most of it. Don’t focus on whether the day is sunny or rainy (or whether a given conversation was sunny or rainy), or whether the other person was nice enough to you or not.  Don’t wait for someone else to come love you well some day (because “some day” may never come) -- instead, make sure to proactively love well those around you and those connected to you and those with whom you come into brief contact, and to do that today.

Actually, let’s try to do that every day...