Short Christmas Story and Some More Dreams for the Church

So Christmas was awesome. We went over to my sister Mary's house, and actually opened most of our presents on Christmas Eve so we wouldn't have to rush before church on Sunday. Emma got this plastic princess mirror/drawer thingy that she can sit at and pretend to do make-up. She looked at it in the morning with her huge four-year old expressions and just said, "Woah." and then "I've ALWAYS wanted this."

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I was day-dreaming in church today about a missions team comprised of members of all different denominations. Church of Christ-ers side by side with my friends at Hope, together with Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists. A tiny version of what I wish for the church. With all their differences and strengths and weaknesses covering each other, and sharpening each other. Presenting to the world a body of many parts and abilities, with one hope for the world.

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

Then I imagine that small group of church re-united, spreading itself like a medicine through the broken body of Christ. And the body climbing, together again, further up and into Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Something you could only ask from him, for whom all things are possible.