A Multi-Faceted Beauty

This was a post I put up in my beginning blogging days (5/21/07). I still see the world through this lens. I just tonight went back and re read it and thought I would repost it.

What one word describes you in the body of Christ? I think most people who are planted near streams of living water would be able to answer this question. I realized years ago what that one word is for me. My suspicions that we all have that one word that describes us came to me while listening to R. C. Sproul Jr. speak of his Father. He said that his Father's whole life could basically be reduced to one word,  "Holiness", and more specifically, "the Holiness of God". Sproul went on to add that his own life could be summed up by the word Kingdom. This led me to think of my own life in these terms, and so I think for me the one word would be "truth." For my wife, there's no doubt what it would be. "Worship".

I like to think of this as a beautiful kaleidoscope portraying the Body of Christ. When it's just my wife and I interacting together, the Body of Christ represented by that interaction is two colors, so to speak, constantly interacting with each other as our life intersects with circumstances. As I observe my wife, I am constantly challenged in the area of Worship, and she also in the area of Truth. The result of our oneness summed up as a total becomes Truthful Worship. Add to the kaleidoscope another person along with their unique color and giftings and everything changes. As more and more are added, the result is the beautiful and fully functioning Body of Christ.

In the same way that in marriage humility is required to meld two different people into one, so it is within the local church as the Body assembles itself into one. The absence of humility could cause me to become upset with my wife about what I perceive to be her focusing too much on worship as opposed to truth. The same could happen with other individuals within the local church as they interact. In a worse case scenario, one could become discontent, surround himself with similarly gifted people, move to Tulsa and start a whole ministry built on that one theme. As for me, it has been my experience that truth by itself doesn't function very well. It needs to be seasoned with mercy and grace. And in the same way, mercy and grace don't function very well without truth.

As we walk humbly before our God, these varying gifts become the Body of Christ. We are all interdependent on each other, and ultimately it is God who gets the glory as we not only participate, but also experience the beauty of the Body as it functions in a way that is wholly beyond man's ability to orchestrate.