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Article Archive |
2007
Side Tracked
by Jim Morris
A single shaft of light pierced through the relative darkness inside the rural, Arizona church. It stabbed at the guest preacher’s eyes as he tried to read his scripture text from the pulpit.
“Will someone please close the blinds to that window?” pleaded the preacher with a shy grin.
“Ain’t NOBODY gonna touch that window, preacher!” snapped back one of the church members standing near the offending window. “The blessed apostle John tells me in the Good Book, ‘God is LIGHT; in him is no darkness at all.’”
“Listen here, preacher,” warned the man. “It also says, ‘If we claim to have fellowship yet walk in darkness, we lie and do no live by the truth!’”
Pausing, the man looked around the church as a third gave him knowing nods of approval, “That there window stays OPEN!” he bellowed.
Blinded by the blazing Arizona sun, the guest preacher quoted from memory part of Psalm 23. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”
In response, the larger part of the church said, “Amen! Close those blinds!” When the blinds were closed the church grew silent. Outnumbered, outwitted and offended, the “open window” brethren got up in a huff and left. The church split when “side tracked” over personal preferences.
Just about any thing can split a worldly-minded church. How can anyone stop such a thing from happening over and over again? The apostle Paul’s solution was to keep the focus on Jesus and not on debatable issues.
He told the divisive Corinthians, “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Corinthians 2:1-5).
May we learn to handle the word of God with trust, truthfulness and integrity. May we resolve to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified rather than fussing over “open or closed windows.”
10-24-07
# 43
