Integration

One Body at the Table

For a long time, I stood as a watchman on the wall.

A watchman looks outward.

Discerns. 

Guards.

Measures what is right and what is wrong.

Separates what feels pure from what feels compromised.

There was a season where that was necessary. I had to work out my salvation with fear and trembling. I had to know what was mine and what was inherited. I had to come out from patterns, from structures, from borrowed thinking.

But something shifted.

Christ did not invite us to live forever on the wall. He invited us to sit at the table.

When you sit at the table, you are level.

You are not above.

You are not below.

You are not scanning for error.

You are sharing bread.

Over the last two days I have sat with Pentecostals and with Greek Orthodox monks. Two very different expressions. Two very different languages. Two very different ways of guarding what they believe is holy.

And instead of division, I felt integration.

The monks hold continuity.

The Pentecostals hold immediacy.

Each emphasises something beautiful about Christ.

But Christ is not divided.

It is one body at the table.

Different journeys.

Different emphases.

Different paths of obedience.

None above.

None below.

When you stand on the wall, you see difference first.

When you sit at the table, you see belonging first.

We do not all walk the same road, but we are walking toward the same Head.

We do not all speak the same language, but we are fed by the same Bread.

Division inside a person becomes integration when they stop guarding their ground and start resting in Christ.

I no longer need to measure who is deeper, freer, more structured, more organic.

I can love the Church as Christ loves the Church.

One body.

One table.

One Lord.

And that feels light.