5/7/13

We Used To Play Church


In the summer, we played outside from sun up to sun down. We made houses in the gravel driveway with brooms. We slept in tents clipped over the wash line. We held weddings and played church. We played circus and the tickets where the whirly-gigs from the maple tree.  We played store with small yellow buttonweed for $.

My kids did the same. With a twist. They played Star Wars in the woods, using the backyard firepit as Armageddon. They talked Barbie down from a suicide jump. They made rivers, towns and bridges in the sandbox. They read on blankets in the soft grass and ran holes in their hotwheel tires on the driveway. They wrote the script and  played their own version of circus and church.


What Does It Mean When It Says ...

So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around you ... Christ--that's where the action is. See things from his perspective." Colossians 3:1-2

My classes at the bible school I attended included "The Book of Acts." Twice. Some of you will appreciate that tidbit of information more than others, the point being; I want an "A" this time around.

Sometimes it takes some of us a bit longer to catch on ...

Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.  “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Acts 1:6-10
Sunday morning in Missouri
Watch the clouds!

If we call ourselves new testament believers we should be seeing, at the least, 365 new believers a year in our living rooms, on our facebook walls, in our neighborhoods and in our churches.

Then they went from town to town, instructing the believers to follow the decisions made by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in their faith and grew larger every day. Acts 16:4-6

Religion is manmade. Church is Godmade.



Church is who we are.  Church is what we do.

I used to play church.