Monday, February 1, 2010

why we are here.

I have been thinking about this story. It is a clear reminder of why the local church exists and the sacrifices that it's members are called to perform for the sake of it's mission.

The life saving station
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was a once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves, they went out day or night tirelessly searching for the lost.

Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding areas, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little life-saving station grew.

Some of the new members of the life-saving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea.

So they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in an enlarged building. Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they re-decorated it beautifully and furnished it as a sort of club.

Less of the members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired life boat crews to do this work.

The mission of life-saving was still given lip-service but most were too busy or lacked the necessary commitment to take part in the life-saving activities personally. About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people.

They were dirty and sick, and some of them had black skin, and some spoke a strange language, and the beautiful new club was considerably messed up. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's life-saving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal life pattern of the club.

But some members insisted that life-saving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the life of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast. They did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. They evolved into a club and yet another life-saving station was founded.

If you visit the seacoast today you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, only now most of the people drown.

Let's not ever be a part of a story like this.......

It's a beautiful day in God's world, be sure to see the good.

2 comments:

Sharon said...

Wow...what a thought provoking story. And a very scary one. I hope you will share this, or at least the gist of it, with the entire congregation.

Josh S. said...

Sharon,

There's no need to be afraid. For every extravagant clubhouse that is built, there are 10 life-saving stations without a building. Of course, there are life-saving stations with buildings, too, but the life-savers know that the building is not the thing.

Wherever two or three of us are gathered to save lives, Jesus is there. Wherever Jesus is, there is victory. So don't be afraid if it seems like church buildings are becoming club houses. Life-saving is a messy and flexible job. We need mobile units springing up in tents, moving around, saving each other's lives. (I am fascinated by the amazing work of the mobile medical units in WWII. How did they save all those lives without a hospital building?)

We know how the story ends. Sometimes people say the story ends with Jesus coming back when things are as bad as they can be. I'm not so sure about this. I think Jesus is giving us the power to redeem the world. We get to help bring the Kingdom, the Family, the Network of Heaven down to earth. When all is said and done, we're going to be proud of what our church, our body, our people, has done. We won't be like screaming infants, waiting for Jesus to come into our rooms to pick us up. We will be triumphing adults, grateful we got to the dirty work of picking others up.

This is just what I think, right now. I'm working it out backwards. But it's a story of hope. Let's put fear behind us, since we know what happens in the end. Wherever we are today, we get to show people that Heaven is real. We know it when we see it.