04 Sep 07 Love Notes
I missed being at Faith Quest this year. I’ve already heard, as I would have expected, that the time was great. We had a little bit of faith quest of our own here this Sunday. We may a big push to provide a special service on a typical low attended Sunday. I received a lot of positive feedback from our service this Sunday, even with a period of silence included. Of course, I hardly ever hear the negative feedback first hand.
Two Sunday’s ago we received an anonymous attendance card. A disgruntled person wrote "How can you call yourself a Church of Christ!! You are a disgrace." This positive and encouraging statement was included with a reference to Matthew 15:8-9. I feel sorry for whoever wrote that note. I feel sorry that in this life, this side of heaven, this person may never experience the joy and freedom found in a church that is filled with the grace of Christ. And, if God chooses to speed their departure towards heaven, well so be it! God moves in mysterious ways! 
Maybe the reason we’ve done such a pathetic job at loving those who do not yet know Christ is that we keep doing such a pathetic job of loving those who do know Christ. If the way we treat those in "the brotherhood" is any indication of the way we treat the lost, it’s a scary indication that the lost will remain lost.
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Have received a few of those annonymous postcards and letters over the years. I really have a difficult time even caring about people who would write such a letter, yet if I knew who they were, I would go out of my way to show them I care and to see if we could just talk. They are very outspoken cowards, in my opinion. But we keep on keeping on . . .
I thought of you yesterday when I was picking the hubby up from FQ. Ah, the memories.
Why do people have to be so grumpy?! It takes so much energy to be ugly like that. Sounds like they need a big hug.
Yeah, there was a time that such a note would have really bothered me. Now I file it under “sad” and don’t think much more of it anymore.
I’ll go a step further than my Math Brother and say that when you receive one of those nasty notes, you know that your message and your church just took another step closer to being the image of Christ. Jesus elicited many of the same kind of remarks because he challenged people to go deeper and to love more as they grew closer to the heart of God.
Yes, it is unpleasant when we receive one of those nasty notes but as we say in the South, when you get them you’ve “done good.â€