Have you ever been dive bombed by mocking birds? I can tell you from experience that its horrifying! I was probably 11 years old mowing the yard in Pryor, Ok and Alfred Hitchcock’s nightmare came to life. I was on a rebuilt riding mower tooling along minding my own business when from a big tree across 7th avenue came a blood curdling screech as I took a blow right in the back of the head!
It seems the tree across the street was a new home to newborn mocking birds. I threw that thing in high gear and sped back towards the house. I waited for the all clear and tried another pass, but I was still in the feathered sniper’s line of fire! That old mower never moved so fast!
Ed Wheeler had built it for my dad. It was a strange beautiful amalgamation a Troy Bilt Snapper John Craftsman Deere. But no matter how many colors it was painted with, that mower saved me from death by beak that day!
A bored Jr High Boy is a scary thing
Ed was my Sunday School teacher when I was 10- 12 years old. That guy took us boys out looking for fossils at the lake and gave us all an amazing Christmas gift one year. Our first tools! He gave us all little miniature screwdriver kits. We had gone from a boy to a man with one present. As I opened the wrapping I could hear my own voice deepen and I knew I was ready to take on the world.
We all felt it, because this great blue-collar man of God had given us real power. Lance was just as excited as I was to get the screwdrivers. But my buddy took it to a whole other level. You see he was bored one day. If you know anything about Jr. High boys, boredom is a very bad thing. I remember the call my mom got from his to this day. Lance had put his screwdrivers to good use. He had nothing else to use them on so he began removing the siding from his house one plank at a time
“Idle hands should never be given a screwdriver, they will screw everything up before you know what happened.”
Its hard to blame him, but yeah… Lance took the siding off on one side of the house as far up as his adolescent arms could reach. I learned that day, idle hands should never be given a screwdriver, they will screw everything up before you know what happened.
All these years later I look at some of the messes people wearing a Christian label have caused and I wonder, how did we get so screwed up? How did we go from giving up all we had, to help the hurting, to building fancy new buildings? How did we go from “the Son of Man has no place to lay his head”, to preachers buying jet planes? How did we go from being the ones the world looked to for love and compassion, to being the worst tippers at Sunday lunch? How did we go from backing down religion to becoming one?
There is blame to lay in many places, but one is idle hands. We have been given tools to change the world; amazing worship music, powerful pulpiteers, Hollywood style movies and TV shows, pastors specialized in specific functions within the local church, even apps that replace leather bound pages of the very Word of God. But like my buddy, we do more harm than good with the tools we have been blessed with.
We do more harm than good with the tools we have been blessed with.
That screwdriver set could have fixed countless problems and solved a untold number of issues for the right user, but instead it tore apart the very house meant to keep my buddy safe. All the things that God has blessed us with to reach a new and changing world, when left in idle hands, do more harm than good. They are used to tear down the house God built out of love for us.
The musical styles divide, and the pulpit is either filled with intolerance or worse apathy. Money is spent to shine the walls of the tomb so that it looks contemporary. While the minds of the dead bones inside have forgotten what it was to be lost. We spend so much time entertaining the saints, that we no longer do the work of the Lord. If the much needed institution of the local church is to be saved from itself, we must stop preaching to the choir and leave the church doors to love the unlovable.
Our doing nothing; to give to, love, aid, comfort, and accept the lost outside our doors, has left us with idle hands that spend their time tearing down the safe place God built for us to open freely for the hurting.
Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore into all the world and preach to gospel to every creature.“
Christian, the local church isn’t for you
Christian, the local church isn’t for you. Luke 14:23 “Go out to the highways and the hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled.” Therefore the church shouldn’t make you feel good about you, it should make the lost feel welcome and loved, not isolated, judged, and singled out as dirty or less than. Jesus would leave your potluck and go eat on the street with prostitutes and love on lost hurting souls.
What are you going to do with the time and tools God has placed in your hands? I encourage us all to be the Church, not just build one.
In both of these scriptures He calls us to go. Not to stay, or call to them from our pews, but to go. Find where you can make a difference. Go where you are needed. Give away comfort and help someone in pain find the comfort God offers. I am convinced we must be the Church and “seek” to save that which is lost.
The basic idea of this post is Biblical and true. However the local church is for the saints to be inspired, instructed and equipped to reach out to the lost.
There is no doubt, and for this reason I called the local church much needed. Thank you for stating that the purpose for the inspiration, instruction, and equipping is for the stated purpose of reaching the lost! My point exactly.