JCK-at-large SITE

You can certainly pick up the 2020 Corona Virus in church.  It’s unfortunate, but passing through the hallowed doors does not grant immunity.  In fact, for some, attending church may not be a good idea until this thing subsides —  even with social distancing, masks galore and sanitisers! 

However, there are other things you can pick up in church which are not nearly as deadly.  In fact, these you cannot afford to miss!  In normal times, which surely are imminent, it’s important to get there for the sake of these contagions. 

So said one man who was so disillusioned with life that only the church could save him.  “My feet had almost slipped,” he says, “until I went to the house of God.”  This ancient citizen was so offended by life, that he wondered if it was even worth living.  His observations told him that life was unfair, that living with ethics was not worth the bother.  Why should I “wash my hands in innocence,” he asked, when those whose hands are filthy with corruption have “pride as a necklace…no pangs until death, and bodies fat and sleek?” (Ps 73:7). Meanwhile this man had nothing but hardship. He was so offended by the unfairness of the world, so jolted by its hard knocks — he concluded that a life of integrity does not pay.  Somehow he needed to detach himself from the marketplace to gain a right perspective.  Church can give you that reprieve.  A fresh vantage point.  The bigger picture.  Your right mind.  It can help you distinguish between short-term and long-term gain.  Through preaching, the holy scriptures, the worship event — it can reorient your brain.  We all need that.

Secondly, church offers us a place to adjust adjust our self-concept.  On the way out, after catching some kind of divine virus, our psalmist confesses, “I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.”  This is conviction.  Not many of us get that, or “come under” that, without the church.  On the contrary, if we carry any conviction at all, it is that we are the good guys.  And if “anyone” is beastly it is the neighbours.  Especially their teenagers.  We are among those that M. Scott Peck talks about in People of the Lie, “who are not only in the right, but are the ones who are leading the way.”  But something happens in church that allows you to see our less than perfect human condition.    Imagine this godly, good psalmist, who may have been the choral director in an ancient assembly, coming out of the house of God saying, “I was brutish before you.”  That’s the Holy Spirit.  And the church is where He is often found.

Then thirdly, not only can the church, with its divine contagions, reorient your thinking, and alter your self-concept: the church can also dispel your anxieties.  This man apparently found a peace that  goes beyond this life.  Call it “blessed assurance.”  Listen to the man who was so steamed about life’s inequities! Can this be the same man?

“Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.  You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.”  (Ps 73:24).

It’s like this man is now imperturbable. What lovely words about the state of the redeemed!  Imagine finding a relationship with God which is “continuous!”  Where “he walks with me” every passing day.  Where He is like a parent guiding a child, “holding my right hand!”  Where He “guides me with his counsel” in all of the ups and downs of life, when I am inclined to draw the wrong conclusions — “you counsel me.”  And as if that were not enough, add the most blessed assurance of  eternal life!  That “afterward you will receive me to glory.”  That’s peace.  That’s a most lasting composure.  No wonder our psalmist leaves us with such a sense of serenity.

So corona virus is one thing.  Probably it should turn us all into online church members for a time.  But times will soon be back to “normal” — with all the jostling, competitive melée of everyday life.  During those days, we will need to find our way to the house of God — because that is where He can keep our life in balance.  Intact.  Or, better yet, in tune. 

In fact, our psalmist ends up with some melodic lines of praise.  A love song!  Something like an ode to the lover of his soul:

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Psa 73:27).