Community in Christ

The Christian Community is much too quick to snip at one another and go after the jugular of faults.  Do we think it was toward the Pharisees only that Jesus aimed his barbed arrow in the Sermon on the Mount?  It pricks us too and more truly stabs us all the way in the heart.  How can we ever hope to progress in joy if we are captivated by the splinters in the eyes of our fellow servants?  Evangelism is simply pious platitudes if we are not loving one another unconditionally.   It is laughable to hope that we can build the Kingdom if internally we are squabbling and mocking one another, critiquing and evaluating each other's works and motives.  The crisis in the Church has never been without but for two millennia within.    Much more damage has come to us at the hands of our fellow believers than any non-Christian has ever caused.  Love does not begin with some lavish pronouncement but with a single determination to overlook an offence or keep to ourselves our criticism.  We can do this with Christ living through us but without Him, we are hopelessly entangled by our grievances and dissatisfactions.  As we look to Christ in the heat of our acrimony, the Lord will grant us His love and kindness to come out of us at the very moment we need it.   Our Lord has a great deal of grace for those who "love too much" or "overlook too much" it seems and if we should err, it would be best to err on the side of mercy and compassion rather than take up with the older brother in his complaints.  Job's friends look all too familiar to us  and we must be careful we don't sit in their camp when Job comes our way.  We might find ourselves begging the Job God has given us for mercy when the Lord "catches up with us."

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."   Matthew 7:1-2 NIV