“Remember
that you, once Gentiles in the flesh – who are called Uncircumcision by what is
called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands – that at that time you were
without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from
the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the
blood of Christ.” Ephesians 2:11-13 NKJV
One
of my favorite metaphors told to me by an elder of the Church helped to explain
how we can so easily feel disconnected from The Lord, when the world begins to
bear down on us, and we feel the emptiness of our emotional pain. The
elder pointed out that often we can walk while holding hands with a loved one
and soon get to a point at which we no longer feel our hand being held.
When we reach that point of being connected without feeling that
connection, we need only to tighten our grip to remind ourselves we are still
very much connected.
It doesn't matter whether one is a new convert or has been raised in the
Church. Everyone experiences that loneliness and sensation of being
disconnected from time to time, and the reason is often as simple as allowing
the world to convince us we have no real value except in “utility” – that is,
we are only as valuable and desirable as we are useful to someone.
We
all have a need to be desired, to be wanted, to feel useful and of value; and
it is so easy to get caught up in our loneliness to the point that we convince
ourselves no one really cares. It happens (too often) even in the Church,
the one place on this earth that is called to be “set apart” from the rest of the
world, the very Body of Christ in the world! This does not necessarily
mean the whole Church is corrupted beyond redemption, however. It means
there is a whole body of Christians who have forgotten who they are.
We
kid ourselves when we become convinced that some prayer we said so long ago is
enough to carry us for the rest of our lives, for even in our justification
before the Lord we do not stop being human! Often we feel disconnected
because we do not make the effort to reconnect, and then we become embittered
when the Church does not stop to call on us. There again, a collection of
humans who have the same problem we think is overwhelming us – and they, too,
may be hoping someone will call on them to remind them they are of
infinite value.
Without
exception each of us is in danger of forgetting The Lord has not left us,
especially when we take for granted that our hand is still being held.
Maybe we all need to squeeze a little tighter, for we have “been brought near
by the blood of Christ”! The world cannot change this reality, but that
same world would prefer you and I forget it and “get real”.
We
must not allow the world or even Christians “in name only” convince us we have
no value unless that value is directly connected to our usefulness to them.
That is their curse to live with. Our blessing is the knowledge we
need only to squeeze a little harder, seek out others of the faithful, and
completely disconnect ourselves from the “users” of the world and even those in
the Church. Only then will we realize The Lord was there the whole time.
Blessings,
Michael
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