Cry Out to Jesus

I was driving home from work last week and instead of listening to sports talk radio I decided to listen to some music. Now I don’t listen to Christian music radio, but I like Third Day. And as I listened to Cry Out to Jesus in my car I was moved.

Here are the lyrics for those of you not familiar with the song.

There is hope for the helpless
Rest for the weary
And love for the broken heart
There is grace and forgiveness
Mercy and healing
He’ll meet you wherever you are
Cry out to Jesus, Cry out to Jesus

I started thinking about church while I was driving and how different the world would be if a church was a place where the helpless could find hope and the weary could find rest. Where the broken hearted could be loved. Where grace, forgiveness, mercy and healing where freely given and received. Where people were met wherever they were in life.

Why?

Rudyard Kipling said that who, what, where, when, how and why were his "friends" who taught him everything he ever knew. Any question started with who, what, where, when, how and why cannot be answered by a simple yes or no. They require thought.

If his friends are my friends then my best friend is "why". If you ask most people why they do things a certain way you will inevitably get "I guess we've always done it that way" as an answer. I love to ask people why. Especially when it come to their beliefs and practices.

So much in churches today is tradition passed off as biblical. So much is done out of convenience, yet convenience is only wrong when others do it. Example. Why is the offering taken up as the third element of the Lord's table in some churches? Convenience. This one bothers me. It's like you're paying for your meal at a restaurant. I often wonder what people visiting a church that does that thinks when they see the offering plate come by?

I have always questioned everything. Questions are good, not bad. One of the things I love about the heroes of the New Testament is that they were not afraid of questions.