Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 94: How long dear Lord? How long?

"For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does;

and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel." John 5:20

Every good thing that Jesus was came from the fact that God showed him. God showed him so that he could show us. He showed us so that we might show others, becoming a city on a hill. My, how much we screwed that up. 

What a way to begin a devotional.

Jesus sat at the proverbial feet of God and watched attentively seeing the movements of God. Movements of action and reaction. Movements of creation and recreation. Movements of justice and love. Movements of grace and reconciliation. He learned all that he could because he had eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart that took it in to pour it all back out again.

We sat at the feet of Jesus, first literal, then proverbial. We sat there as fishermen and tax collectors, and then we sat there as disciples and followers. We sat there lost and alone and were found. We sat there in fear and the fear dissipated. We sat there in bodies that appeared alive but were dead and we became souls risen in new life, born afresh to the altogether different same world.

Later we sat all over, at Jesus's proverbial feet. First we did it in Jerusalem and then later in Rome and then only in Rome, then separately in Rome and Germany and England. We sat in Greece and Russia. We sat in the ends of the earth and we listened and we learned and we grew and we messed it up. 

Because we sat separately when Jesus and God sat together. We sat separately where Jesus and the disciples sat together. We sat separately where as the first century church sat completely in common, giving where there was need, taking where things were given. Pride wasn't there. Fear wasn't there. But it came, it came in the form of disagreements and dissolutions and theses and translations and heresies. It came in the forms of wars, of words, of ideas, of man to man combat. It came because of our need "to be like the cool kids, because all the cool kids, they seem to get in."

But it wasn't supposed to be this way. We were supposed to find the path together. We were supposed to change and adapt along with the will and work of God. We were supposed to emulate the example shown to us because he emulated the example shown to him.

+ How has denominational difference helped the church move forward? How has it hindered?

+ Do you have real friends [not Facebook, not acquaintances] that go to different churches? How can/do your differences affect your beliefs?