Demo days

Many of you know that we just bought a new building for our church – but it needs a lot of work. We have scheduled a demolition day for Saturday June 4^th as our first step to remodel and restore this space – we are pretty excited about it. But then I hear news this week, news that is pretty wide spread, that the world is coming to an end on May 21^st. Bummer. So demo days is off?

Every so often some group claims they know when the end of the world is coming, apparently this has been going on for some time since Jesus even fielded such a question. His response, “I’m not sure…don’t worry about it.” But we kinda do worry about it, don’t we. I’m not ready to poke fun at these people saying the end is coming on Saturday because I’m reminded of a story in Genesis about a dude building a big boat. The end really did come for a lot of people then. But I’m also not ready to buy into this new end of the world scenario because this scenario, like many of its predecessors, tells us that God is going to get the “righteous” people out of this mess of a world (in this case 2% of the population) and leave the “bad” people to burn and suffer. Here’s my issue: this is just not consistent with the theme and flow of Scripture. God doesn’t usually “get people out.” Rather, time and time and time again He calls His people to stay in the midst of the mess, the suffering, the pain – and many times to suffer with others and even sometimes to die in the midst of this pain and suffering. In the Biblical message, God’s people don’t “get out” – they “get to be in.” And this “being in” is exactly how God works in the world.

God’s message to His people, the church: Stay. Engage. Love. Suffer alongside. And I will be right there beside you and within you. I'm not pulling you out, I'm putting you in.

God doesn’t call us to “get out.” He calls us to “be in.”

So maybe we’ll have demo days. Maybe we'll get to continue the restoration project after all. I sure hope so.