This is MY Church!

She raised her hand to speak during the meeting at church.  “I asked the Lord to not allow me to say anything” was how she began to share her thoughts.  (Ponder that my friend and, after reading what she said, let me know what you think!)  Yet...she continued...“This is my church and I have raised my kids here… (translated "I have been here longer than you") and you, pastor, have come here …” (translated "you don’t love it as much as I do").  After hearing the phrase “my church” way too many times, and many hurtful things that went along with it (which, by the way, she later called and apologized for), I bolted out of the room in tears, enraged, sad, frustrated, telling myself this is why I am allergic to business meetings and prefer to not attend.

I have thought about those words a lot since that evening.  Her intentions were not to say it really was her church…after all…she KNOWS it is Christ’s church.  Right?  We say things like that all of the time.  ‘I love my church’.  ‘Why don’t you visit our church’?  ‘Come hear my pastor.’  So why was I so upset?

Fast forward to the post I wrote a couple of days ago….where I wanted to be ‘just like her’.  Where I said I wanted her life.  Where I talked about my house and my life.  I pondered what I wrote…and it hit me!  The very thing that upset me about the lady talking about her church as if it really belonged to her…..I was doing the very same thing!!  Sure, I KNOW fundamentally it is NOT my life…it belongs to the One who created it and the One that I live for….yet often I treat it as if it is mine!!

How easy it is to be critical of the things others do or say and forget that we do and say the exact same things!!  It is not my job to judge her intentions….it is my job to not be judgmental.  Again…forgive me Lord!!!