Back Up

Can we just take a break for a minute? Let's seperate ourselves from all our causes. All our struggles. All our failures. And focus. Why do we do what we do? Scene kids, jocks, gang members, theatre kids, band nerds, junkies, youth leaders we're all looking for something to rally around. To call our own. The band Further Seems Forever puts it this way: "Everybody's waiting for that something we can hold on to, but we're tripping over our words into self dug graves." All life is a battlefield but we don't know who we're fighting for. We're looking for a banner to ride behind but until then we just rage against one another in our confusion and desperation. And while we waste time fighting each other, the real enemy that we are not even aware of is WINNING. We long so dearly for peace. For the death to come to an end.
But in order to face such a daunting enemy, there has to be a cause that is higher than that which faces us. But we don't know what that is. Love? Peace? Understanding? What rallying cry sounds louder than death?

Guys...

THIS IS IT!!!

The cross of Jesus Christ! Any semblance of joy, any momentary vision of peace, any feeling of love we have ever experienced is perfectly manifested in this, the greatest moment of history! Yet we are afraid of it. We are afraid because if we embrace it we will have to let go of everything else. But are the things that we are holding on to not precisely the chains that we so desperately long to be free from? We are afraid because we have seen the church's shortcomings. But is that not precisely why Jesus died? If the modern Church is nothing but hypocrisy, was that not in fact exactly the way the Jewish church was during Jesus' lifetime? And yet when He died and rose from the grave three days later a new Church rose up! A Church that turned the world upside down with the message it preached. Is God powerless to do so again? Can He not once again bring the hypocrites to their knees through the power of His Church? And indeed he has already begun to do so! In America we find ourselves to be the center of the Christian world, but look around at the Church universal. The Church in China, in Africa, in Iraq! THEY are allowing Christ to change the world through them! All we have to do is jump on board! Embrace the power of the cross and stop trying to save the world ourselves!