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The most radical thing I do!

Have you ever considered the question, “What is the most radical thing I do?”  That is a question that Mike Flynn asked in a recent article.  It is so thoughtful, I thought I would share it with you.

 

The Most Radical Thing I Do – by Mike Flynn

 I go to church.

To get there I pass through the shopping centre on its busiest morning of the week. The sports fields are crowded with players and spectators,the park run friends in their shorts and tees mingle with the lycra-clad cyclists, crowding the cafés. If you know where to look, you can sometimes catch glimpses of the yoga and meditation session in the community room. As I pull out into the dense traffic the world is full of people running errands, visiting open-air markets, piling into Bunnings, travelling to and from visiting family and friends.

Meanwhile, I go to church. Why?

After all, group exercise is good and necessary for physical, social and mental health; meditation can adjust our mood and re-centre our thoughts to a calmer mode; grocery shopping and the unending list of domestic projects need to be tackled sometime in our crowded week; friendships and family commitments are hard to maintain in our separated lives. These things can be good, even necessary. But still I go to church, for a short time of inefficiency, irrelevance and rebellion against our curated, self-improving, iLives.

I go to church out of gratitude for the sacrificial love God has shown us all in Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:3–6). I go to church to be reminded of the rare gift of reverence (Psalm 148), to reflect on a Word that is bigger than what our agnostic entertainments imagine or what our news feeds fear (John 1:1–4Hebrews 1:1–42 Timothy 3:16–17). I go to church to get out of my head, to stop being conformed to the patterns of our deeply confused culture (Romans 12:1–2). I go to church to learn holiness, to be trained in character and wisdom (Philippians 1:9–11Colossians 1:9–14); to have a moment of sane honesty about my frailties and wrongs—to repent of them and to love again what is right by the strength of God (1 John 1:5–2:2). I go to church to give and not to get; to show and to experience grace (1 Corinthians 12:27–13:13). I go to church to leave behind a world where we have to earn everything; to instead commit to giving up my life for Christ’s sake so I may truly find it (Matthew 16:24–26). I go to church to remind myself that I am sacrificially loved, therefore I can love (Philippians 2:1–18); to reject the bleakness of this world: ‘I consume, therefore, I am consumed’ (Colossians 3:1–10). I go to church because God enjoys it and I enjoy his joy in his people (Ephesians 1:3–10). I go to church because it is the unanticipated centre of what God is doing in our crazy, battered and beautiful world (Ephesians 1:15–22Revelation 21:1–4).

As I left our small church this morning the crowd sitting outside at the café opposite stared at me. I smiled back and waved. They had no idea of the fundamental treasons I’d been committing, of the revolution I participate in.

I go to church.

 

Mike Flynn is an Anglican minister working in aged care. You can read the original article here: https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-most-radical-thing-i-do/