Thoughts about my church
And in you all the families of the earth
Shall be blessed. Genesis 12:3
Read Matthew 8:5—13
Thoughts about my own church come crowding around me like the congregation itself when I read this about Jesus and a Gentile military man and a healing. Wouldn’t it be great to be the church that grew out of this incident? We’d allow Jesus to have a kind of military authority. Jesus can speak, and we, the troops, will say, ‘Yes sir.’ My church would extend way beyond my family circle, the culture and the clans that I am most at home with. The full church is as wide as every people group on the globe, meaning that in my church I only see the edge of it. And my church is always, always an outcome. It’s the outcome of God’s promise to Israel, worked up into the Good News events of Jesus. It always has to be a great thing for me to be embedded in my church because my church is the outcome of a plan that is as long as the universe’s life. It’s the very point of the universe and the very direction of it. My little church is!
My gracious God, it is my life’s privilege to belong to my church, and to see in it far more than it appears. More than it looks to the unbeliever. Probably, yes, surely, far more than it looks to itself. I pray that we will all count it the privilege of our lives to be this church. I pray for faith, real faith that jumps to the lead of Jesus. I pray for people of every background to join in. I thank you that my church is important to you, in fact a fulfilment for you — that is an unbelievable grace — and that we are your beloved.