Where is the Church?

Warning: I'm about to get a bit personal here.

There are days that I sit back and woner where the church is? Today is one of those days.

Many, many years ago (a bit over 22), I came into a felt relationship with Christ. I saw that I needed hope and deliverance from the life I was leading.

At the time, I had a vibrant faith community. These were truly incredible, truly awesome people with a deep and abiding love for God. They tried in so many way to reach out to me, but I losed myself off and away from them.

As the years went by, I went through various churches and began to develop an awareness of the fellowship I was missing. To this date, I have never found it again, and I can't help but marvel at the irony that when I didn't want the help, it was there; when I needed it, it was nowhere to be found.

I've tried to steer that need, tried to channel it into a ministry of my own, but I can't. There are aspects of it that I can't do, where I am ill equipped. And in the meantime, I've punched the clock on job after job that might mean something to someone else, but means very little to me.

I am exhausted. I am sick, tired, and fed up.

And yet, in all of this, I have to ask: WHERE IS THE CHURCH? God set a very specific plan in place, and charged His people with feeding His flock. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick, housing the homeless, befriending the lonely...all...ALL of it fits under God's plan. Yet we'd rather fill ourselves with pithy feel good stories, show up on Sunday and put our money in the plate and all it good.

A few years ago, a famous author put out a book called "The Prayer of Jabez". It was a bestseller. Unfortunately, it was as misguided as it was popular. See, the author thought that Jabez was simply looking to get wealthy and that God rewarded him. Wrong; Jabez' prayer was that he would no longer cause pain to those around him.

I know that prayer because I've prayed it myself many times over. And I know that others know that prayer because you can see it expressed in the song "Hurt", recorded by Nine Inch Nails and later Johnny Cash.

We live in a world where we think "stuff" eases pain. Where is we create enough noise, perhaps we cannot hear the cry of our conscience when we see a hungry child, or a homeless man walking the streets asking us to spare just a pittance of the wealth with which we have been blessed.

We can do better. We MUST do better. Now is the time for the church to act. Never have we been more needed. Please take the time to reach out to your friends and family, to love them as Jesus loved them, and to just listen. You will give them more than you know.