Wed, Nov 14
... I know you're not perfect...
Hello breakouts! We have entered into the makeup phase of the production. How fun for us! :o) I love watching the guys put on their makeup... it's really quite a humorous experience. It's rather scary walking into room 260, though, and seeing a haze over the room from all the colored hair spray that's been used! Crazy times...
I love my class. Honestly, the fact that the eight of us can grow so close to each other and be as open and vulnerable as we were this morning is so encouraging.
I sometimes get so frustrated with the church. We're supposed to be God's representative and body on earth, and we fail so miserably sometimes. I've grown up in the church my entire life, and sometimes I think that I expect too much of it. Sometimes, though, I think that expectation is a good thing, because if it's directed the right way, it pushes us and makes us change.
The church is supposed to be the most loving, forgiving, accepting, and rehabilitating place on earth; the place in humanity where God's love is most evident in a group of people. It's supposed to be the place where the dirtiest, most rotten sinner can come and find a place to call home. Unfortunately, we get so caught up in the politics of running a church, the status associated with belonging to that church, and the "Christian" image that we want to portray to the rest of the world, that we forget how Christ accepted the needy--spiritually and physically needy--regardless of their position or status.
I realize that the church is made of imperfect people, and as long as that's the case, it's never going to be perfect. That's not going to happen, and I wouldn't want it to--a church that admits its shortcomings and failures is so much more real and open than one where so much of a facade has been built that nothing is real anymore. No, the church needs to be as human as it is, but it also needs to realize that it is not only human; it is divine as well.
It's sometimes the people who have been a part of the church the longest who can feel the most left out and excluded. Just because they've "always been there" or even "always been involved" means that they need any less of a welcome and invitation. The people who have consistently been the ones doing the encouraging do sometimes need encouragement for themselves. It's just as wrong to assume that once someone is in the church, life is peachy keen and there are no more problems.
No, it's not perfect, but it's home, and as disillusioned as I may be at times by it, it's still part of me. The church is so much a part of who I am--not the building, or the institution, or the structure, or anything like that. The people. The unity. The realization and recognition of our commonness and our differences. But most of all, the thing that is so much a part of who I am that I can never escape it is the common blood shared... the common ground found in the blood of Jesus that pumps through each of our veins, that ties me inextricably with the rest of His Church worldwide. Not just in my little corner of this place, but the whole thing.
infinite || abyss
posted at 8:53 p.m.
