If we didn't know it was alive and well, it seems that it will reveal itself again and again. I was at a local business (not to be mentioned) and witnessed what has become a new form of discrimination. Isn't it interesting that we find new ones? Old ones pass away and we find new ones and move along. I'm sure Jesus is stoked about it...Anywho, I was at the above non-mentioned business and a person asked for a cup of water to go. She was then informed she could not have one, "because we don't do that" in the most uplifting voices possible. Rifts are formed. Muffled conversations occur. Consider this a divide now. And who was this above mentioned person. She was a lesbian and not trying to hide it and now she was thirsty to boot.

I wonder sometimes what the love of Jesus looks like. In a Church that despises "alternative lifestyles" of any kind, it seems love is only relevant when it looks like us. Love is necessary when people like us struggle with problems like we have / had. It doesn't seem that love really looks like that though. Love seems to be caring for all people in all circumstances. We are a Church of imperfect people. With imperfect lives and we are perfecting hiding our problems. All the while ostracizing those who aren't like us or our problems. I think of women at the well, adulterers in the street, lepers outside of the city, issues of blood on the road, demoniacs from the hills, blind men in trees and on the side of the road, murderers on horses, sorcerers with forces (urban poetry for ya) and every other kind of sinner you can imagine and think Jesus would never discriminate, playa hate but only articulate to allow the seed of God to gestate. And we find ourselves strangly distant from that. In more of my reading from last night, Jim Wallis pointed out another fact when talking about private faith :

"In the end, private faith becomes merely a cultural religion providing the assurance of righteousness for people just like us." pg. 35

All that was lost sounds less and less like you and me and more like everyone who share no similarities with you and I. The single ethnic, single minded, single track church has run it's course. It's time for the church of former Sauls, adulterers, demoniacs, cripples, blind, mutes and every other kind of "us" to return. That makes the Church all the more beautiful. Because a lot of you and me gets really boring really fast.
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Now playing: Amba - Margherita