There are just some days I feel as if I live in a bubble, I grew up in a bubble, and I LOVE my bubble!!!! I'm always taken off guard working in ministry, no not with kids but with people I actually work with, the people alongside of me in this- my peers! Things that I would never be surprised of if I were still working a non-ministry job. Lately the big one is angling. Most people who are "successful" have probably angled themselves perfectly for some sort of promotion. It is a common everyday happening yet I am shocked that I see people doing this in ministry. It hurts my heart. Aren't we supposed to have a different definition of success? Aren't we supposed to be a team player? Yet I see my peers creeping around in dark alleys and checking both ways to see if anyone else sees them.
Now it is no shocker that a lot of us have been hurt by the church, we tend to lump it all together as every single person in the actual building when it is probably in reality only a few people, the chances of you actually being on everyone in that buildings radar to begin with are slim. Yet we get frustrated in ministry or in church and bind it all together and group it into all christians are like this. If that is true we better look at ourselves and see if we are in fact falling into that same pattern. I think what is the most hurtful is that our lines are being blurred it is easier to work with non-christians then those who are. Me first! I find myself sometimes being totally frustrated because I hold them at a much higher standard all the time forgetting that we are all human and that grace is a consistent daily necessity. Forgetting that God himself is offering me grace throughout my day yet I can't even muster it up once a week for some people. So I find myself loving the outreach of ministry, and saying they don't know of Christ's great love so how would they know that they aren't being loving. Yet I thrive when I'm surrounded by the loving fellowship of christian community, my heart leaps when I talk to my best about how God is pursuing us and crying together about great redeeming love stories, or laughing till we pee. How I forget that we are all (myself first) continually being transformed into the likeness of God.
Will I still be blindsided and caught off guard when I begin to see some of us in the christian community angling ourselves or looking sneakily around corners? I hope so! If I'm not that means I'm probably in that dark alley and looking over my shoulder.
* I want to say that I used blindsided instead of naive because I know what goes on, I'm aware. I also know that I am a continual work in progress and I have NOT arrived so please do not take this as me saying I've got it figured out because I don't. I have at times been in that alley and been sneaking around myself, but lets talk about it be truthful and get it out in the open holding each other accountable in a GRACE filled way so that we do not stop transforming and we will become more Christ like. *
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