Pick up an instrument and join in

I’ve been very slowly making my way through Simply Christian by N.T. Wright for a while now.

It’s been slow going partially because I haven’t kept up with the discipline of reading some everyday and because it’s a pretty thought-provoking book.

But today I reached the end and I think I was inspired as much by the last paragraph as I was the whole rest of the book.

In the afterword to the book Wright gives some things he thinks will help you move further in your Christian journey after you are done with the book. He mentions getting a good bible and also some other books that you might want to consider looking into.

Then he says:

“It would be wrong, though, to give the impression that taking things further after reading this book would consist simply of reading more books. The church, for all its faults, is at its heart the community of those who are trying to follow Jesus, and in whose company those who are starting to explore these things for themselves may find help, encouragement, and wisdom. As we might say to someone starting to enjoy music: don’t just listen to it, find an instrument and an orchestra and join in.”

For a long time I didn’t see the point of having a church. After all at church they tell you that you need to have a personal and intimate relationship with God, so why would I need other people to help me with that.

But I’ve come to realize that the church is just a place where a group of us who are trying to wrap our heads around this thing that we believe, can meet up and join together on our journey.

Me, on my own, can only do so much.

Me, on my own, can get so in my head that I’m not helping anyone but myself.

Me, on my own, will mess things up every time.

But with others by my side and God with us, we can do anything.

With God and a church. we can change the world both near and far.

With God and a church, we will still mess up and fall, but can be there to pick each other up along the way.

What could we really do in our world, if we truly joined together with God and other believers and sought to bring about Godly change in the world around us?