He ain't heavy...or is he?

 In a world where everyone is a sinner there is no possible community, true, loving community, without dying to ourselves and laying our lives down for the good of the other.

There is no possible way to die to ourselves and lay our lives down for another without pain.  Without loss.  Without absorbing and being willing to absorb damage!  Innocent as doves, yet being willing to be afflicted both for and BY another in order to gain them.  In order to love them.  In order to one day see them and the community healed, whole, shalom.  To sometimes suffer long years in silent service for nothing more than the hope that God may use it to change their hearts or simply because we love them, and we would rather be hurt ourselves than stand by while they hurt themselves.

Are we willing to jump on a grenade for ...anyone?  Who do we love enough to sacrifice for?  Our family?  Our church?  Our neighbors?  The kids down in Sunday School who need teachers?  The "difficult" guy or girl that few people like?  Our sibling who still just doesn't get it and keeps dropping grenades in their own lives?  

Our society is largely rich enough to make many historic forms of suffering a choice now.  If you have enough resources, you can quite often avoid wholesale many forms of pain and trouble and hard work that our ancestors took for granted and therefore learned how to live with!  We lost a lot more than the ability to suffer when we became unwilling to.  We may have even lost the ligaments of community.

My version of Imagine

 "Therefore, I urge first of all that petitions, prayers, requests, and thanksgiving be made on behalf of all people, on behalf of kings and all those who are in authority, in order that we may live a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable before God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, the testimony at the proper time, for which I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am speaking the truth, I am not lying—a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger and dispute." 1 Tim 2:1-8

Oh that it should be so, Lord! Oh that your people were of one mind, one heart, one body! Oh that we with one breath, and that of the Spirit, plead with you for the lives of our families, the lives of our neighbors, the lives of our nations! That we would beseech you on behalf of all people everywhere! The small and the great. The servant wench and the general. The head of state and the lowliest beggar child. The leper and the supermodel. The athlete and the lame. The junkie and the CEO. The billionaire and the single mom on food stamps. What if we all, with one voice, cried out to You and tore our clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes and fasted and denied ourselves until you heard from heaven and it rent your heart and you could not bear our sorrow any longer? What if the church actually was the church, your voice here on earth, your heart here in the midst of the people, in the midst of a lost world? What might You do then? What miracles might we see in our day?

This is my version of that inane song, Imagine.