Where we are meant to be
In Christ there is no east or west, in Him no south or north, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.
John Oxenham
It’s a wonderful thought isn’t it?
This great fellowship of love stretching itself around the world, making loops and crisscrossing the globe, touching everyone.
It’s true. This is the way of Jesus, his love finding us wherever we are, there being no place where he is not. His red blood dripping down on us, into us. We embracing it and saying, “Hallelujah! I’m saved!”
And then what?
Because Christ restores the peace between God and us, we now go and, “…are Christ’s ambassadors…” to this message of reconciliation and peace, (2 Corinthians 5:20).
And some of us will go and tell, unable to hold back such a beautiful ministry of reconciliation. But for others, it will be uneven road, because while we are forgiven and reconciled, we have much to forgive and reconcile with each other. This world is filled with high rocked walls of entitled rights and petty preferences, abuse and forgotten-ness. Yes, even the church looks like this.
What can we do? Perhaps pick up a sledgehammer and destroy it? That would do it, a glorious rubble at our feet.
But just as we know what will happen when we swing that heavy handled, forged metal overhead, letting it fall, we also know what will happen to us.
We’ll be exposed. Our truth we be told, that we hold on to our self-created, small and shallow hearts.
But Jesus sees how deep he’s made us. He sees the capacity he’s given us to love like him, to forgive seventy times seven, to turn the other cheek, to go and tell the world about what he’s done for all of us.
It’s a hard, handled thing to reconcile. It’s pride-draining. It’s red-faced vulnerability. It’s looking past our perceptions, into eyes that Jesus sees and saying, I love you anyway. It’s taking the long way, with shaky knees and sweaty palms to be reconciled in truth, one to another, opening the way to share what Jesus has done.
Jesus restores the peace. He reconciles us back to God. It is where we are meant to be.
It is where we are meant to be with each other, all people, everywhere.
We have miles to go, to the east, west, north and south, making amends with each other and telling how Jesus saved us. But for those who have uttered, “Hallelujah! I’m saved!,” it is our charge, to love and be restored to God’s creation, and be sent to proclaim it across the whole wide earth.