I have a plethora of excuses. The fall was a crazy time of our lives. Justin was student teaching, we were in the midst of a home study, I was traveling a lot, and we had a 6 month old. And yet, none of these excuses are a valid reason for how I failed this fall. I'm not going to go into the details but what it comes down to is there was someone at church that was relying on me and I never followed through. Never followed up. Could have been a 10 second text or 10 minute call and I just didn't do it. And the result of that failure is that someone is having a hard time with our church. That's right, the work of one person (or lack thereof) is impacting the entire church. You may think that's a little extreme but the reality is, if the church is lacking one person that should be there and is not, then the entire church is impacted. And this time, it's my fault.
I think about the church as a whole and how the personification of "the church" has failed society. Not that some individual churches are not doing great things. But somehow we have forgotten that we are broken, sinful people who are not perfect and make mistakes. The church is so quick to place their own thoughts and beliefs on those who are not inside the walls that they alienate those outside the walls and fail to accomplish the original basis on which the church as a whole was established. Now, don't get me wrong, once inside, we are called to a higher standard, but we forget that we come from the same place as everyone on earth! And at no point are we commanded to put that "standard" on anyone else. We are commanded to love. And love is what I absolutely forgot to do. Not that I was holding anyone to my standard but I just got caught up in life and failed to show the love of Christ to someone who desperately needed it.
I bet if we stopped focusing on ourselves and focused more on loving people the way Jesus taught us, there would be plenty more people inside the walls. AND the perception of Christianity in this world would be entirely different. The only thing I can do is to start the loving for myself. And most of the time, I try to do that. But this last fall, I failed miserably.
To the people outside the walls who feel judged or that the church is lacking, I apologize. I hope you realize that God's love is bigger than his broken, sinful people. I hope you know that the message of Jesus Christ can be boiled down to his commands: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and also, Love your neighbor as yourself. And we also know that there is nothing we need to do to be ready to know him or come to him. The bible tells us "He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him." (Romans 5:8).
While I failed a person and they are questioning me and our church, I know that thankfully, I am covered by God's grace. I have asked that person for their forgiveness and asked God for mine. I am reminded of Paul when he asked God to remove a trouble in his life and the response was, "'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. ' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Corin 12)
So to the person I completely failed, I again apologize. I am so sorry I let you down. I dropped the ball and it has impacted you and your family and our church family and I take full responsibility for it. I ask that you have a smidge of grace for me and, maybe, give our church another chance with the understanding that I am one person and I am broken and sinful.
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