Worlds Apart

Picture in your mind with me this view…

The earth from space suspended with nothing else in view. Sand in one stream flows from an unknown origin and is poured out on the top of the world. The sand collects and begins to form a tall mound. Each grain of sand is disconnected from the rest in nature, but in its position in the mound feels surrounded and somehow connected. The sand continues and the mound only gets higher, the base spreads out little by little. Some grains of sand fall beyond the edge of the mound and are now separate from it, but remain sand. The sand never stops; it only causes the mound to climb.

The second half of this picture is another earth from space. Once more, nothing is in view. A stream of water falls from unknown origin and is poured out on the earth. It does not pile up. The water flows over the earth itself and covers it. The water does not climb high, nor does it ever seem to be anything but one unit. It spreads until the world itself is covered entirely.

What is the meaning? It is a contrasting picture of two philosophies of “church.” One seeks to bring believers together centrally and end there. Though some of the disciples of this church break from the mound and find their place outside the boundaries of the mound, they are disconnected and seen as such- outside the boundaries. Each grain feels belonging to the mound, yet is not fused to it in any way, in fact, what affects the top of the mound does not echo to the inner parts. It is such with the pile of sand. Meeting cannot be the focus of church. Becoming a pile of believers in one section of the world simply allows our desires for a tower to be facilitated. This is not the intention.

However, the second picture is not the same. Water does not pile, it is fluid. One unit yet mobile and flexible. It fills the regions to the cracks and the most hidden parts, nothing escapes. This is the church whose disciples make disciples and go. They do not emphasize the place or time of meeting, but know that the action of one area of the fluid will be felt across the entire body. It moves with the same desire- make disciples that make disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit and the transformational nature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The world is covered with the reproduction of this body.

What then? Do we seek to be a pile in this area? Do we desire to be a mound of believers coming to one place? Our desire must be to spread. Sand is scattered by wind. If wind comes across water it simply causes the body itself to be stirred. What is our emphasis? If we desire the fluid nature of the life in the Holy Spirit, we must spread.
-G.N.