...A Peek Inside “Community
Outreach”
She hunches in front of the shelves, busily scanning
clothing bins. Avoiding eye contact, she forgoes the handshake. I smile and hand
her a shopping bag for her finds. She keeps hunching – lurking almost – searching
through bins, not wanting to be seen.
“I don’t go to this church…” she offers, flipping open a
lid.
“Neither do I” I shrug.
She sifts through clothes quickly, as though prepared to
flee.
“Uh… I … we … haven’t really found a church yet…” she says
to a box of shirts.
And I think I hear it. I’ve felt that same back-bending pressure;
that claw-back giving.
Suspicion grows for good reason when surrounded by
‘nothing’s free’, and ‘I’ll give to you IF’, and all the conditional love that
isn’t love at all.
She closes the lid and flips open another. I wrestle for
something to say, finally blurting, “This has nothing to do with church.”
She lifts a shirt out of the box and inspects the logo. It
must sound insane. We are, after all in a church building… But it makes perfect
sense to me.
An outsider myself, I’m welcomed as a friend here at
Community Outreach. No one has asked me, “So what church do you go to?” They
don’t ask because it’s not important.
I watch her grin at a T-shirt she holds up. I desperately
want to tell her that there’s no obligation here – to join this or any other
church. It’s not a marketing scheme or some clever ruse. It’s about love, not
requirements; giving, not gain. I want to shout, “We give as Jesus gave – with both hands open! Isn’t He great?!”
God promised to inhabit our bodies, not our buildings. We’re
not a collection of clubs; we’re family. We are known by our love for each
other. Lucky for all of us, that love spills outward into the world. And it’s free!
“Your love for one another will prove to
the world
that you are my disciples.”
John 13:35 (NLT)
.
2 comments:
Lovely Kim. :)
:)
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