Helpful thoughts

This article was written by a talented facebook friend.  I have permission to share it but I don't want to link to their blog as I don't think that's appropriate. So below is DEFINITELY NOT MY WRITING but I think it is helpful and reflective and so appropriate so I am sharing it - please don't share further as that's not in the permission I received:

"This will be the first weekend for many Christians of not being able to meet together, sing songs, hear the Word of God and share a cup of terrible coffee with the people who have come to be like your family. 

But for some of us, we haven’t been able to go to church for a long time, because of disability, mental health, being LGBT, or we just asked too many difficult questions. So here are a few thoughts from survivors that may help you survive your new spiritual isolation with your love for Jesus intact. 

You may need space to feel

You will experience a lot of big and complicated emotions. This is a bereavement of sorts, and a threat of sorts so you may get both sets of responses. You may feel a mix of angry, devastated, guilty, frustrated and lonely. Your body will react in whatever way it thinks will keep it safest, so you may find an obsessive need to do things, a need to fight someone or conversely a lack of motivation to do anything. These are “just” emotions, not a sign of spiritual backsliding, sin or demonic possession. God has made your body and mind with the ability to cope with and heal from remarkable degrees of damage; give yourself space to process what’s happening. Notice how you feel and ask God what that’s telling you. Listen to what God says, and don’t just try and dampen the voices of your inner self with Bible verses – that just delays the healing.  

You may need to find your own centre of gravity

Being in a church community, we put a lot of trust in other people to tell us what to believe. This has upsides and downsides. It can make you feel part of something bigger and reassure you, but it can also be a barrier when God wants to say something different to you, or if your leadership are wrong or abusive. So don’t be surprised if, with a bit more space to yourself, you find ideas sneaking out that you had been holding down before so you didn’t get into trouble. It’s OK to lean in to those. Some will be utter rubbish, some will be the voice of the Spirit and bring new life in your relationship with God. You don’t need to be afraid of them, and you can trust the Holy Spirit to lead you into truth. There’s a reason so many prophets and saints went to the desert to hear God. 

You may notice Jesus in unexpected places

We are so in the habit of expecting God to “turn up” in a meeting that sometimes we forget that Jesus rarely did anything of note in a religious meeting. You will need to develop the habit of finding God where you are, in nature, in people you chat to online; through your Muslim neighbour, and the atheist serving in the Co-op, and the gay nurse who looks after you in the hospital. You will receive grace from places and people you would never have considered. Because God still loves you and is still with you and that doesn’t change.

You will ALWAYS, ALWAYS find Jesus in suffering

 As privileged Western Christians, we like to run from suffering. We assume the best Christians are the happy, rich, healthy ones. This is weapons-grade rubbish. Weapons-grade because it pushes out people with disabilities, those with poor mental health and those on low incomes: in fact all the people Jesus prioritised and spent time with. Jesus is ALWAYS with the outsiders, the marginalised, the bereaved. On the cross, Jesus was wounded and damaged as he absorbed the impact of human selfishness and arrogance and he carries those scars into heaven. Throughout history, the saints have endured plagues and famines, evil empires and natural disasters. Holiness cannot mean conformity to a human stereotype of perfection, whether in physical health, financial wellbeing or keeping it all together. Rather, the challenge is, in whatever hardship we find ourselves, can we love others as Christ loves us?

You may find a new intolerance for exclusion

Every church likes to think they welcome everyone. Most don’t. After this, when you can give your friends a hug again, sing the latest Bethel hit from your mostly-healed lungs and drink more of that terrible coffee, please remember what this felt like. 

Add to it the expectation that it will not change and go back to normal, ever, and you have some idea of what being a Christian is like for many people who would like to be part of your church, but can’t. So what can you do to improve things?

Keep livestreaming your services. Catch up with isolated people on a regular basis. Find ways your disabled or chronically sick church members can contribute to your community from their homes. Make a space where people can deal with their difficult questions. Find a form of words that doesn’t glorify health and wealth as evidence of God’s blessing. Stop saying LGBT people can “just not go to church if they can’t change” and actually engage in some serious listening and find out how God is working in our lives. Make sure your church is genuinely accessible to all.

Because God is still at work in and through the church to make us more Christlike and to spread God’s love into the world. Through crises and plagues and political upheaval, some things don’t change."