Today's reading: Mark 3-4
"He looked around at them angrily, because he was deeply disturbed by their hard hearts..." Mark 3:5 NLT
Without looking the passage of Scripture up, can you tell where Jesus was when this occurred?
Might He have been in a house of ill repute? Could He have been in a tavern? Was He in a drug house? A gambling facility?
It might surprise you, and it might not, that at this point in His life, Jesus was in the church. He was surrounded by church folk. Within the walls of the house of God.
Impossible you say?
Then you haven't been on the 'church scene' very long.
Even the Christmas and Easter visitors who will fill the pew tomorrow know the simple fact: Christians are not perfect.
It would be nice to assume that each and every person who has accepted Christ as their personal Savior has lived up to the changes He has made in them. It would also be nice to think that each and every sermon preached by Bible-believing pastors are intended toward the unbelieving, because they are the only ones who would need them. It would also be nice to know that every person staying out of church would never think to use 'those hypocritical Christians' as their reason not to attend.
Tomorrow, yes, even on Easter Sunday, God will be looking down angrily on a few church attenders who have broken His heart because of their attitudes and actions.
The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's own or real life. The truth is of course that what one call the interruptions are precisely one's real life - the life God is sending one day by day. - C. S. Lewis
