Weary and Burdened

What follows is not completely thought out. It’s something that I am still trying to wrestle with and figure out. So don't take it as complete truth, just some thoughts:

In class yesterday, we talked about this instance where some people were looking for places to stay in a church in Chile, and they were turned away. That got the class started on this discussion about how the church should perform and live out the Eucharist (the sacraments of communion, the bread and the wine) to people in need.

I thought of a conversation I had with a friend, where I was visiting the church he worked for and we were about to leave and I asked him, "hey aren’t you going to lock up the doors?" he says to me, "why would I do that?" I said, "Well, what if someone goes in there and stays the night in there all night or something." My friend said,” Well, good then, they had a place to stay out of the cold."

That really took me by surprise. Never thought of it like that. Something that I have always done is do a lock up before we leave, to make sure no one can get in and take anything that belongs to the church. And to be honest, that is a legit and practical reason to do so. That’s why I agree with why we do that. But, I was just blown away by the different way of thinking. In class we started asking the questions, why would we care if someone came in and stole something or spent the night there? Well, because it is the churches stuff and we use the guitars, video stuff, and all the things inside the church to reach people for God. Again, a legit reason. But I guess what I am proposing is that we have a view on things like that.

If someone came in and stole a guitar, and you saw them with it later somewhere on the street or something, instead of saying, "hey! That’s my guitar! Give it back!" What if instead we said, "oh man I absolutely loved that guitar, it sounds so good, I would love to borrow it sometime to play like old times." The fact is we are so worried about people taking OUR stuff. The fact is they are possessions. The church building is a thing. That’s just the way we think today, this is OUR stuff.

I am not saying we should not NOT lock up our church doors at night. I would like to think of it as; we are locking up our doors to keep a person from being accused as a thief. I'm just wondering what it would look like if we had a switch in mentality.

With all that said, if we are to take Matthew 11:28-30 seriously, what does that look like? I don't know. Maybe a new way of thinking? A new understanding of what is means to take in the burdened and weary?