The Rest of the Story

My kids have been sick so I haven’t done any schooling this week (it’s kind of difficult to teach when your students are hovering over the toilet).  This means instead of being productive I’ve spent way too much time following rabbit trails into the depths of the interwebs...and it hasn’t been pretty.  Over the last few days I’ve visited several blogs and web sites, some Christian and some not, that each have sought in their way to expose some wrong-doing in the Church.  They shine the light into the unkept corners of the Bride of Christ’s soul and revealed true carelessness, complacency, lack of frankness and accountability, and outright sin.  The topics have been wide and varied whether it be in the area of missions, adoption, homeschooling, or insert-pet-sin-of-the-moment.  And this is a good thing, a needed thing, a necessary thing, but it has left me disturbed in my heart.  We need to be disturbed, it causes us to move in directions we wouldn’t have before, but in each of these stories there has been something missing.  It has taken a couple of days for the problem to bubble to the surface of my mind (which is typical) and I think I’ve finally pinned it down.  The problem is that they shine the light into these deep, dark places of the Bride’s soul and leave her exposed, naked, vulnerable, in the open, with no comfort or hope.  They rip the bandages off of festering, stinking wounds, but leave the wound untreated.  They don’t finish the story.

No doubt the bride is a harlot and a whore (don’t stone me, it’s in the Bible) and she has known many lovers, but the story doesn’t end there!  Christ has once and for all redeemed His Bride!  He has not left her naked and vulnerable, he has clothed her with His righteousness.  She will continue to sin and sin deeply because that is her nature, but He will continue to uplift her and sustain her.  

We need the bad news, we need to hear we are broken, we need to be stirred from our complacency, but then we need to be told where to look, where our hope lies, that Christ isn’t finished with us, we need to be told the GOOD news as well.  Otherwise, it is too easy to get lost in despair and to sink into hopelessness.  We need to be told the truth and that truth does not end with the exposing of sin, but with redemption!

So to all those who find themselves called to open our eyes to the sin of the Church, thank you for loving her enough to seek her correction, but don’t forget in where that correction lies - in the arms of her Savior.  Seek to focus our hearts on Him and the truth of His gospel because there in lies the power to change her course.  Finish the story, because Christ has!