Today I Saw Church

Have you seen church lately?

I saw it today, and it was great.

The sermon today was based on Mark 12:28-31:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (30-31)

That's a really good definition of church, or at least an excellent statement of what we are to be about. Even "Go, and make disciples" stems from that. Love God; love each other.

At the end of the service, Joe, as he sometimes does, invited those attending who felt the need to come forth to the altar rail and pray. A lady in our congregation, who is scheduled for knee replacement surgery tomorrow, came foward and knelt at the railing to pray. I don't know the content of her prayers, but I'm sure the surgery has to be weighing on her mind.

Joe stopped where she was for a minute or two, and then I saw church go into action. At least six or seven people, from the choir, from the congregation, came up to the railing. Some of them knelt beside her and some of them stood behind her. For the time that she was praying, she was surrounded. They prayed with her. They stood with her.

She was so completely surrounded by church, that those of us in the pews couldn't see her anymore. Surrounded by church. Surrounded by God's love through these people. Surrounded, completely eclipsed by the Body of Christ.

Church -- what I saw today was at least a major part of what we are to be as the Body of Christ. It's not the first time I've seen it, but I'm amazed by it every time I do see it. I've certainly been the one supported by it, and I hope there are times that I am part of the support that is provided by it.

Thank God for it.