If the people don't praise God the rocks will cry out.
I know I sound like a broken record sometimes but I believe it is the message that God has given me to proclaim. Something is missing in the way we do church today versus what God intended. I read about it this week in a blog. Rather than having the government do all the supporting of the widows and orphans its supposed to be the church's job.
So what happens when we aren't being the church the way God intended it to be? Does He remain silent? Does He go into hibernation and disappear for a season or twenty?
The rocks cry out.
John Eldredge first gave me the idea that is the core of what I'm going to say. When the church quit showing the world what our God was like, Hollywood took up the mantel. Or better said, God used even carnal Hollywood to spread His message in the world. When we see epic films like Braveheart we see depicted the sacrificial life of Christ in the closing scenes of William Wallace's life. When we see the epic battles of good and evil in J R R Toilken's Lord of the Rings on the screen we get a glimpse of what is going on in the heavenlies....and what is also going on in the world we are a part of. It is unseen to many of us.
I had a thought this afternoon while watching a trailer for a new reality show about a super nanny. I only saw it once so I don't remember the real name of the show. But she enters a home in which abuse is taking place. She demonstrates to the father with a backpack of rocks the damage that is being done when the father is verbally abusing his son. Trying to carry the backpack full of rocks is hard and it is an object lesson used by the nanny to show the father what his criticism is doing to the son. The father ends up in tears. He is touching the pain he feels in his heart...probably because of the absence of a father figure to show him the Father.
You've probably also seen the shows on hoarding. The family has their possessions which literally took over their lives while in the home scattered all over the front lawn of the house. There as they attempt to sort out what they are going to keep and what they are going to throw away they begin to realize how their things have literally taken their lives away. The are brought to the place where they are talking about issues they have avoided for years. They are talking about the real impact of the piles of stuff. The elephant in the middle of the living room is exposed.
There is weeping. There is a seeing into their hearts. There is a connection that comes between family members that has been missing.
Why in hell (get offended if you wish) is that the "ministry" of the reality shows? Why isn't the church doing that very thing for the lives of those who warm their pews (or chairs) every Sunday morning? Why are we not setting people's lives free from the broken hearts they live with daily? Those broken hearts keep them from connecting with each other even when they live lives within inches of each other every day.
I shared something in a post with one of my FB friends this week. When our hearts have been hurt we recoil. We close off our hearts for further hurt by detaching ourselves from each other. The only problem is that we give up the chance of ever experiencing intimacy again.
We lash out at those closest to us with our pain like the father in the reality show toward his son. His burden that he has been carrying for many years is being transferred to his son. And his son has every possibility of transferring that to his son (or daughter).
And the hoarder is trying to fill the void in his/her heart by surrounding themselves with things, things and more things.
I had a conversation with my dearest male friend this week before he went into open heart surgery. He said he wasn't sure how much of the bill was going to be covered by his insurance, Medicare and that he may even have to literally sell his farm to have life.
My response to him was that who he is as a person is worth the farm...literally and figuratively.
When are we going to give up playing church and start being the church? When are we going to stop investing in things that moth and rust corrupts and get back to investing in real lives...lives that are hurting? Lives that don't know what a real relationship is like? Do we have to let the reality shows tell us what the church should be doing to rescue those with broken hearts (Us!) or is it time for us to BE the church?
"The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach Good News. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted. He has sent me to set the captives free."
