Jesus in the Room

I arrived…

Uncomfortable

Out of place

Feeling stared at

I struggled to “be”…

Okay…

My heart ached

At my loss

This once was a place I belonged

This once was my people

Now it is different

And I wondered how many of the others here

Are sitting silently hiding their hurt

Then I felt someone touch me from behind

Beginning to massage my neck and shoulders

I struggled

Because I was the leper, the elephant in the room…

Wouldn’t it be better just to disappear into the crowd for a while…

Maybe forever?

I knew without looking who was touching me

A friend who had been hurt herself

By the religiousness of the “church”

And then I realized…

In this big building full of “Christians”

My friend was Jesus in the room

Not caring about appearance

Not caring about political or religious correctness

Finding the one

Risking her own “reputation”

To be Jesus in the room

Who would say to me…

“I will touch you;

I will rub out your sore places;

I will come to you

Because I know you are hurting.”

As I pondered this act of kindness,

I knew God was saying,

“This is where I am in this room.”

“I am in the hands who’ve come to you in your hurt.

I don’t care what anyone thinks.

I am coming to you to

Touch you,

Love you,

Comfort your hurt places.”

And I longed for the many who I knew were in the crowd…

Wounded

Hurt

Afraid

Alone

To know Jesus was really in the room.

And I thought…

If we could quit being “a” church

And be “the” church

Would we dare stop the service

With the worship and the preaching

And use our hands and our words to be

Jesus in the room?

My soul ached and wondered

How we’d gotten so far

Away from caring about “the one”

One another

How had we gotten so caught up

In caring about

“feeling” Jesus in the worship

Learning about him in the Word

But rarely ever

“being” him

By cutting through the system and

Touching the hurting?

I wondered how God would evaluate us.

Would he say,

“You look good.  Your worship looks good.  Your teaching sounds good.”

Or would he say…

“There is a young girl over there who is pregnant and scared. 

Tell her I still love her.

I have a plan for her and her child.”

“Over there is a woman whose husband has left her.

Tell her she’s valuable and give her $20.”

“There is a man who is struggling with addiction.

Tell him I love him.”

Where is Jesus in the rooms of our churches?

And even more importantly,

Where is Jesus in the rooms of our heart?

Is he stuffed inside a religious box

Or is he free

To move about the room?

Because the last time I read the Book

It said that it would be Jesus in us

Who would change the world.

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