Made for This

(The video is a little bit long, but seriously, it is well worth the time)

So this weekend, Sara and I went to a Christian Medical Association retreat.  It was a really good weekend.  The basic point of the weekend was to encourage these young professionals to live for God and work for their neighbor before they get sucked into everything else that comes with the profession.  There were many rifts that are common themes and goals that Sara and I talk about.  We are not only called by name, forgiven and saved through Christ, but we are also here to DO things.  God works through means and we are created to be used within his creation.  It is our responsibility, as people, to take care of everyone around us, even when it hurts to do so or when the costs are heavy. 

So often we do not do these things.  This is a hard blog post for me to write, because although I feel deeply that it is our responsibility to be the face and hands of God within the world, I very rarely actually DO anything.  (Along with that, now that it is in writing, it feels like there is a scary accountability side to it.)  I talk big and live small.  I think we all have the duty to be on the front lines, but am constantly a cheer leader on the sidelines.  Our actions flow from our identity, and this is why this guilt of inaction, along with all my other guilt, continually needs to be brought before God and handed over.  If I am to have and live an identity of one forgiven in Christ through which selfless, loving actions ought to follow, I must constantly be seeking and asking God to create that identity in me.  That is why I am starting to more frequently pray that God will be the iconoclast in my life, looking to him to tear down the walls of inaction in my life so that worthwhile actions of love will flow through my identity as one forgiven in Christ.  

There is so much brokenness in this world and we in the Church so often ask where God is in all of the mess.  The video is both moving and true.  The hands of God are tied up, comfortably sitting in the church pew asking the question, or wasting time defending the 'inaction' of God to those around us.  Comfort is one thing clearly not promised to one who's identity is bound up in Christ.