Beautiful Body Parts

Beautiful Body Parts

Faces line the long downstairs hallway of my home church. Even when it’s empty. The artwork in our family of faith is its families of faith: children, grandparents, moms and dads, friends, and siblings, whose faces make the hallway come alive and never fail to stir my heart. I know their names. I know their stories. In seven years I’ve come to love them and to love being a family of one amid this larger family.

Some of my “relatives” have moved away, but their faces still greet me each Sunday. I’m glad. I miss them, and I need to be reminded that we still belong to one another. Ours is not a lavishly decorated family home. Its furnishings are simple and adequate but by no means fine. Still, they are enough. Our richest asset is displayed on and within and beyond our walls: the sweet saints who are the church. His church. His bride.

We’ve opened the Word together and been fed by the Spirit with its beautiful truth. We’ve celebrated birthdays and engagements and weddings, new jobs and babies and brand-new books. We’ve asked for and offered forgiveness, because sometimes—in the tight quarters of our fallen humanity—we’ve hurt one another without meaning to. We’ve prayed for one another with bold clarity in the crushing fog of uncertainty. And we’ve said good-byes to each other that felt like the tearing of flesh and were—because we are one body, tightly bound in love.

When I read the claim in Hebrews 12:1 that we are surrounded by “so great a cloud of witnesses” (NASB) as we run the race of life, I used to think those witnesses were high in heaven’s grandstand, separated from the race by some vast, immeasurable chasm. And perhaps some of them were, and are. But others are close. Close enough to touch and rub shoulders with. Close enough to share a whispered prayer, or call when I am frightened or need wisdom. Close enough to weather with me a storm that comes from nowhere in an ordinary day.

This body we call the church is made up of some beautiful parts, and I am thankful—so thankful!—to be at home among them.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

1 Corinthians 12:27, ESV