BEING AND WELL-BEING

When I am at home in Denton on weekends, I enjoy going by one of the rest homes before I assemble with the saints on Sunday a.m. and spend some time with my aged friends. The other morning I was sitting beside an aged sister, who has spent her 93 years with our non-Sunday School brethren. She is too feeble and ill for me to do much more than hold her hand, pray with her, and assure her of my love for her and the Father's love for her. I was sitting there holding her hand when my mind wandered, attracted as it was to the continued murmurings of her roommate, whose plight seems to be far worse than hers.

This woman talks in a nonsensical cadence every waking moment. She speaks words, even sentences, but they don't make sense. I was listening to her when I realized that my hand had slipped from Emma's, and she was seeking to retrieve it as if searching for a lost article in the dark. Only then did she tell me, "1 am blind and cannot see you." Even though it was my second visit I had not detected that blindness was still one more burden she had to bear. We talked about how she would one day see again, and when that glad day comes she will look upon our blessed Lord, and that is worth waiting for!

I've been thinking about Emma in reference to our mission to the world and to the church. Emma has being in that she has life. She lives, breathes, eats, sleeps, and negotiates her lot in life, such as it is. But she does not have well-being. Once she was young and gay, strong and vibrant, lively and active, making a mark for herself in this world—all that we would mean by well-being. But now, physically and mentally speaking, she despairs of life to the point that death would be a welcome relief. There is a vast difference between being and well-being.

There are many in the church who are in Christ and who therefore have being, but I fear that they do not enjoy well-being. I have sisters and brothers who really love Jesus and the church, but religion is burdensome and oppressive to them. They are going to church more but enjoying it less. They stab around at Bible reading but it does not excite them. The sermons they hear are usually boring to them if they bother to listen at all. If they manage to do any praying, it is likely to be vacuous and meaningless. Some would call them carnal Christians, but it may be that they are only discouraged. Or they may be locked in to a debilitating legalism and don't know how to get out. They need a breath of fresh air, but it never seems to blow their way. They may even be searching, but just haven't yet found the great secret.

We could say that our congregations are filled with such ones. I've had scores to tell me of how they dragged themselves to church for years when they actually dreaded going, or how they would leave the assembly worse off than when they went, or how they would come home after the assembly and cry their eyes out, or how they were simply turned off and washed out on the whole thing, but still hung on to the outward forms for the sake of duty or as a matter of habit. And there are many, of course, who are so blinded by our sectarianism and exclusiveness that they never really come to see the beauty of "preserving the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

It isn't that I fear for the souls of such ones, as if to presume that they are doomed to a devil's hell. They have being in Christ in that they have been redeemed by God's love and mercy, but, like Emma in a physical way, they do not have well-being, and this is what I want for them.

Preachers are as much afflicted with this drab existence in Christ as anybody else, or even more so since they are often caught up in the mechanics of doing church. If those in the pulpit do not come across as spiritually dynamic, it may be that the resources of power in the Spirit have long since been clogged by the carnal things of this life. We all sing that "It is well, it is well with my soul," but it is not all that often a reality in our lives. We have life in God to be sure, but have we become poor, sick, blind, and naked like that church at Laodicea? Jesus came not simply to bring life, but the abundant life. Not only does he want us born from above, but to grow in knowledge and goodness, and to have joy in the Holy Spirit.

The answer is what our Lord set before that Laodicean church, his own personal presence in their lives. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." We have no promise of well-being apart from Jesus' own presence in our lives. To invite him into our hearts and lives is the only answer, for only he is our peace. And it is peace that eludes us even as we diligently do church. To know Jesus is something else. He makes possible our well-being. Mere being does not touch God's intentions for us.

This is the point about divisions in the church—they work against our well-being as God's people. When I see a brother who is fearful of being with those "across the wall," or a sister who is uneasy in company with those a little different from herself, or a church that draws the line on another one for some infraction of party rules, I am concerned, not because I think they are all going to hell but because they are missing the joys of brotherhood. God placed us in His family that we might be brothers and sisters. He doesn't intend that we behave as if we were orphans or to treat each other as if we were strangers. God gave His son so that we might be reconciled in one Body through the cross—bringing hostility to an end! When we realize this and act upon it, it will mean well-being to ourselves and to the church. We act as if the hostility is not at an end.

I see preachers walk out in a huff when their Church of Christism (or Christian Churchism) is challenged. I see sisters who refuse to hear something different or to entertain a new idea. I see leaders of the church freeze in the face of change. While all such narrowness is to be regretted, it does not mean that God's mercy will not reach out to such ones, just as it reaches out to all of us who are His children. But the Lord intends that they be happy, free, growing, thinking, abounding disciples of Jesus. This kind of well-being is surely related to God's intention for us in another world. If we do not learn to be free, happy, knowledgeable, and responsible in our pilgrimage here, God's purposes for us will have to be realized in some other way beyond this world.

It is like building a dwelling-place. We do not simply want a house, but a home. Love, peace, joy, and goodness will be its furnishings. Jesus will be its Ruler and the Holy Spirit the ever-present guest, with all God's children in festive gathering. Our brothers who slip away into the attic and crawl into a corner are in the house. But we want them down in the banquet room sitting at the table that is covered with all the goodies, relaxed as one is when he is really at home. —the Editor