… Denominations. Honestly, I could give two whoop-dee-doos about what denomination you belong to.  I only ever mention mine rarely and that is usually to give context to what I am saying. Why not …? 😶 I don’t care. I so-o-o totally don’t care about that kind of stuff, at all, because it is absolutely irrelevant to me. 

So, by way of an illustration, let’s look at an orange for a second. A fresh orange smells great, it is a fantastic colour and extremely yummy to eat. Inside it are individual segments, all separate and complete in themselves. We hardly ever analyse the orange, we just eat it. You know, I wish the body of Christ regarded their own belief systems like we regard that orange. No matter how you squeeze it, it is still an orange, and no matter what you call it, we are ALL part of the body of Christ – by choice. What you believe and what I believe probably hardly even barely resembles what Jesus thinks, and says. As far as I’m concerned, He can always have the last word.

Sometimes we can major on minor things. I don’t care if you worship God on your face, standing up, sitting down, dancing or saying nothing. It’s none of my business. If He likes it, then so do I! We will never get to unity of purpose and identity, going via the detour of doctrine and theology. If I met you, I would not care what church you go to, I will be looking for love. I will be looking for the way you treat other people, and hopefully, me. I have the strongest feeling when Jesus yells, “It’s time!” a whole lot of stuff is gunna get blown away and none of it will be love, ‘cos the Bible says: “Love remains..”

People who fight over this religious duty, and that idea, puzzle me. I have no desire to concentrate on the things that separate us, instead I would rather find the things we agree on … Because there’s power in that! So you can have your proverbial bit of the orange and I will have mine, and let’s just hope that when somebody bites into either one of us we both taste sweet. 

Today I want to talk about an incident that recently. Because we are older and need help, the government provides us with someone who comes to clean our floors, once a fortnight. This last time, it was a bloke, and he was kind of unusual, to say the least. He asked us what we needed him to do, and then proceeded to tell us why he couldn’t do it because it was all against the rules! Somehow this dear chap – who had more words than a dictionary – hit a bad button for the slightly-battered-by-life’s-immediate-circumstances pensioners who live in this house. The dear fellow proceeded to tell us that everything we needed him to do was not permitted.

As all his predecessors for the past 15 years, have done these things without a whimper or one complaint, my dear long-suffering hubby was not thrilled! After we had sorted out what was ‘legal’ and what was not … FYI we didn’t ask him to take his clothes off, or wallpaper and paint the house, we just asked him to vacuum and wash some of our floors!! 😱 He insisted he was right and did so over and over again, endlessly. His manager explained to us that some of his points were accurate, and so we asked him to please send us a list of these rules we had never seen or heard about. Inside my head, I thought: “Well dang! There goes our opportunity to love on this guy,’ and then the Holy Spirit whispered to me: ”Ask people to pray,” so I did.

The Lord turned everything around! Despite hubby’s misgivings that he too had blotted his copy book by being so openly cross, the Lord Jesus encouraged him to pray for the cleaner who had a very sore elbow. The dear fellow submitted to it cheerfully, and we had a short discussion about the formal, traditional church where he worships, and what he believes. We did not feel the need to convert him to our way of thinking, hubby just prayed for his arm.

Then we blessed him for his hard work and sent him merrily on his way. My husband said after he’d left: “I did not know that God could use me to reach someone after I’d been so cross with them.” That BTW, is how we both knew it was the Lord, the guy got blessed, and we both learnt something! Sometimes, all our enemy has to do is point out our errors and differences, and then that’s us – knocked right out of the ball game because we’ve forgotten we’re forgiven! It’s time we learnt that God is bigger than our stinky attitudes, and His love will go through any barrier – even denominational ones. Bye 🤗