Coming Home

Some of us have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to come home to Christ.  If you've been in the Church all of your life, or if you've been in it for a long time, it's sometimes hard to understand or remember just how much it means to come in from the cold.  The absolute WORST nightmare I ever experienced was about being seperated from God.  I have no idea how this train of thought got into my head, but one night when I was in college, living in the German House, I woke up screaming bloody-murder.  In my dream, I was lying in bed, and my room was dark, but I could see everything in the room from the light coming in from the street.  I looked up at the ceiling, and a large net was falling slowly over the bed.  Somehow I understood that as soon as the net touched my bed, I would cease to exist in the mind of God, utterly and completely.  Before the net hit me, I woke up screaming, and my housemates came running.  I was so upset that they thought someone had tried to break into my room through the window.  A couple of minutes passed before I was able to calm down enough to realize that I'd been dreaming. 


Of course I had things backwards,  we always exist in the mind of God, but allowing him to be present to us is a choice.   How much we acknowledge God's presence is a choice as well.  But not everyone realizes that they have a choice to know God, or if they do, they may have stumbling blocks that keep them from making that choice.  Sadly, most people who have not chosen God have no idea just how cold it is on the outside.  It's not until they come in from the cold that they realize what they've been missing all along. 


So I wonder, if we came to church one Sunday on a cold winter's day, and found someone sitting outside, underdressed and shivering, would we not invite them in to sit by the fire (yes St. D's has a fireplace) and give them something warm to drink?   When they warmed up, would we not invite them to come to Communion?  Would we not try to find them a coat to wear when they went back outside?  I'm sure we would, that's what people do at St. D's.

If we aren't inviting the people who don't know God, or who have been hurt by religion,  inside to join us, aren't we just as guilty of neglect as we would be if we left that shivering person outside?  The number of unchurched and post-churched people around us is growing exponentially.   We may feel tempted not to worry about it because worrying about it feels like we are passing judgement on someone's salvation, but that's a red herring.   The work of salvation is up to God.  We can rest in that one.  But as St. Teresa said, we are Christ's body, his hands and feet and eyes and ears here on earth.  We are the ones who are called to bring others to him, to bring them in from the cold.