2.22.2009

Walk the Line

As Jim flipped through the channels today, he stumbled on the end of the movie Walk the Line. I hear it's a good movie, but all I've seen of it are the ten minutes we caught today. And as He seems to be doing to me a lot lately, God spoke. Johnny Cash was apparently meeting with some sort of record execs (they had suits on and looked official at least) about a show he wanted to record at a prison. They were obviously not big fans of the idea, and were trying to talk him out of it. This guy was explaining to Johnny (I scribbled this down quickly, so it probably isn't an exact quote)... "Your fans are good folks, Johnny, Christians... they don't want to hear you singing to a bunch of murderers and theives in a prison, tryin' to cheer them up".

Johnny's response...
"Then they aren't Christians".

Ouch.

There are a lot of people in this world, specifically in this country, that call themselves Christian but have never done one single, solitary thing to demonstrate a life led by Christ. In fact, there are a lot of church-goers who would sit in judgement just as this record exec predicted. But Jesus tells us to go to the prisons, to the needy, to the widows and orphans. He tells us that if we love Him, we will feed His sheep. That if we love Him, we will love our brothers. That if we love Him, we will be radically changed, a new creation, peculiar.

To be honest, I have too much going on in my mind and my heart right now to adequately communicate the whisperings of my Creator. I have written and rewritten this post. I want to share. I want to tell you about it. I want to challenge my brothers and sisters in the same way I've been challenged. But my words aren't working... In the words of Elvis... I'm all shook up.

It's a good thing. A God thing. He's calling us to change, church. And I'm excited.

1 comment:

Nicole said...

I just started reading "confessions of a Good Christian Girl" today. It's written for *gasp* Christian women specifically and it talks about how so often we try to be "good Christian girls" and cover up the bad, the hurt, the sin in our lives. I think that fits right with the whole act of not being Jesus for those who need Him most. We cover up all the sin and bad stuff in our lives hoping people won't see it and so that the "good people," the people who don't smell, that have nice clothes, who have money, etc, will see us as Christians and come to church. But instead we should hang out our dirty laundry for others to see how much He loves us and what He can, will, and does forgive us of.