Five reasons to stay in church, and a comment

I reread the article “Five reasons to stay in church” by Aiden Enns, Publisher of Geez Magazine, this morning, as well as this comment from ‘angela’:

“This is a re-occuring event in my life: I am sitting in church, in my pew in the balcony, and someone is talking down below at the pulpit, and I start to twitch. I shift. I look out the window, out the door. I drink my coffee and stare at my hands, and I tell myself: Self, don’t leave. You will miss out.

And it’s true. Some days, I swear I need to mount those stairs to the pew in the balcony with a sack of nails and a hammer and pound my shoes to the floor because (lord almighty) I can hardly breathe from what’s being said, and then other days I sit, I drink my coffee, and god siddles up alongside me and smashes my heart to smithereens with all that beauty he’s got pouring out of that stained glass window, that preacher’s mouth, that 200 year old song we just sang, that grandpa that camps out at church to keep the furnace going in the winter, those flaws, flaws, flaws. 

I love my church. It disapoints me, hurts my heart, leads me astray. And it elevates me, heals me, and shines God’s face on me.

It ain’t heaven yet, baby. That’s not the point.”

I couldn’t agree more.