Broken Body

I am unable to share details here, but I want to say that for the past season or so I have been discouraged about things at my church.  We are going through a messy situation and I am increasingly sensing that people are depressed, confused, and angry about it.  Some of it is because people don't know the whole story, while some of it is precisely because people do know the whole story.  Still others of it is because people are generally hurting, and this incident provides a platform to feel and express that hurt.

I was reminded recently, though, at a congregational gathering, that the church is always made up of depressed and confused and angry members.  The Bible speaks of God using ordinary, earthen vessels through which to showcase His glory.  The apostle Paul urges us to rejoice when others among us rejoice, and also to suffer together when one among us is suffering; he also heard from God that his human weakness was somehow a conduit for God's power to be perfected.

The Biblical analogy of the people of God is that we are the body of Christ here in this world. My church right now is a broken body.  And so long as we remember that we are just that - broken, yet God is still in the business of working in spite of and even through our brokenness; and a body, sticking together, rejoicing together, suffering together - then Satan watch out.