the stirring....

The irresistible revolution..... it's coming, it's even among us now. Christ is stirring up a new way of living against the backdrop of our own selfishness and consumerism. Oh, let it come. Let it change us all. Let's surrender to a different life, a different way a of thinking, a new way of celebrating, a different way of understanding community, a different way of following Christ. What if Christians walked as Christ walked when He was made love incarnate? What would happen? Who would change? Would we change the world or would we see ourselves changed from looking like it?

I'm so tired of Christians with narrow visions, small dreams, and inclusive communities. Really? Really though? How does that even happen? I'm so tired of seeing Christ's body pulled so far apart that it no longer remembers how to work together. What have we done when the church in the suburbs has all the resources and doesn't see the church twenty minutes downtown that is meeting in a condemned house and has all the needs? Shane Claiborne says that "The greatest tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor, but that rich Christians do not know the poor." I know lots of Christians who know the names of lots of charities that donate money to the poor, but they don't know any of the poor themselves, and I include myself because i willingly admit that I too have wandered far from the path that Christ walked. Christ went to the margins of society. He walked under the bridges, through the tent cities, and in the alleys behind the wealthy office buildings. He knew the dumpsters that people searched through to find food. He went to the red-light district of the city and found the woman selling themselves for a glimpse of "love". Christ dwelled in the places where we not only often refuse to walk, we condemn the people who do. We live as if we have the right to have anything we want and as if we have no responsibility for the state that the world is in. How many people have seen the needs of poor and maybe even done something to "minister" to them, but refuse to change to change their day to day lives in order to help? We claim that "we know that alot of people are in need, but that doesn't mean that we have to feel guilty for being blessed." That's not only a sorry excuse, it's a huge load of crap. Christ's love took Him to the cross but ours won't even take us out of the suburbs? "I'm just not called to inner-city ministry or world missions." I don't claim to know where Christ calls everyone to be specifically, but he calls ALL of us to sacrifice.

"but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has been truly perfected, by this we know that we are in Him; the one who says that he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked." 1 John 2:5-6.

I don't claim to be an expert of following Christ(i fall everyday), but I can promise this, if are really going to walk as Christ did, we are going to have to do away with our selfishness, our fear of getting hurt, our small love, and our enjoyment of comfort and normalcy. Christ lived out none of those things, instead we adopted and accepted them from our own humanity.
The time has been long past for surrender. Give in to the stirrings of a new way. They are coming, a long-lost rain after a dry season and a thunderstorm cracking the sky and disturbing the quiet. Breathe deep the beauty of Christ; exhale selfish humanity, and inhale this life-changing grace.Let's go to the world with love on our lips.