Recently I had the opportunity to travel to to Europe on business. During the weekend several collegues and I travelled to the countryside and visited beautiful cathedrals built centuries ago. The workmanship was incredible, carvings in stone, stained glass that filled the sanctuary, but as beautiful as these buildings were, I was saddened by the emptiness. Tourists now exceeded the number of parishioners; gone was the spiritual growth and what remained was only a building that was slowly withering.
Europe like America is straying away from our christian beliefs; too many people are making excuses for not going to church, not engaging in christian fellowship or attending a Bible study class. Sadly, the leadership in churches often has not helped matters. Throughout the centuries, church misconduct, greed and politics within the heirarchy of the church resulted in people equating the wrong doings of man as a justification for turning away from God.
Yes, we are the church, we are people with a lot of ills and needs; but those of use who believe know that there is a God, so great, so full of love that through Him, all things are possible.
When we come together to truely worship the Lord, through prayer, song, and serve others; we begin to understand that it isn’t about a fancy building, or a charamastic religiously leader, that matters. No, it is about a relationship with our Lord; a time of sharing our inner thoughts with Him, and through Him we desire to serve, and love others. As a tangible result even the the simplest one room building is transformed into a house of God more beautiful than any cathedral made by man. A house whose growth is measured by the love it gives is build on a solid foundation.