Isn't it a Beautiful Meadow?

As a child I remember reading a book called 'Isn't it a Beautiful Meadow?' by Wolf Harranth and Winfried Opgenoorth. I still have it in fact. It begins like this, "One Sunday some people from the town went for a walk into the country. When they came to a nice spot, they stopped."

The story unfolds that these people decide to spend more and more time in this lovely new location. So much time in fact that they inevitably end up erecting fences, building roads and slowly but surely, creating a town much like the town they had left behind.

This gets me thinking. Every decade more or less, the various denominations of Church reinvent themselves. We get louder or quieter, ferociously conservative or bewilderingly liberal, we meet in big buildings, then homes, then big buildings again and each generation offers with varying degrees of humility,"this is how it should be done!".

The problem comes when, like the people in the story, we feel we have come to a nice spot and stop there. We settle down, mark our territory and begin to lay immovable bricks, blocking ourselves in and others out.

I'm reminded of another story here. Not sure where I heard it but it goes something like this. An Australian farmer is approached and asked "How do you keep your sheep from wandering off in all this desert?" he responds "Well we don't need fences mate, we just dig deep wells".

Like water, love is a source of life. We must dig deep for it. Love nourishes, it doesn't trap. Love keeps us moving beyond this meadow and the next, freeing us to cross property lines. Love must travel beyond our best idea of church.

It doesn't matter if we're cafe church, clappy church, cyber church, hyper church, parish church, power church or whatever beautiful meadow we find ourselves - without love, it'll just end up being all that we wanted to leave behind.

dp