Bring on the Nuts!

There was no ignoring the sign. Posted right as you enter the church school building, it was there to protect children with allergies, but the secondary message made me smile. How true, I thought, and how sad. I couldn’t resist writing a brushstroke about it.

There was a day when the church was made up of nuts, imperfect brothers and sisters united in their need for God and basking in a grace that surpasses human understanding. The tax collectors and sinners of Jesus’ day formed this thing called “the church,” which was referred to as the “Body of Christ.” That body, made up of “raggamuffins,” to quote Brennan Manning, was magical. It took ordinary people like you and me and made them into something more.

Slowly, however, things changed. Maybe when the emperor converted, bringing the entire empire along with him, the church became something different. Maybe when the church grew powerful, and priests began to rule rather than serve, it changed. Whenever it happened, and however it has continued, the church became a place of prestige, a place where the blessed children of God gathered to celebrate and give thanks for their good fortune. While we should always and everywhere give thanks to God for our many blessings, we can’t do so as people no longer in need of Grace. No matter how blessed we are - no matter how large our bank account, or how high the social pedestals on which we stand - each of us, every single one of us, is imperfect. Whether we want to (or are able to) admit it, each of us is fallen, or nuts.

On the surface, that doesn’t sound like good news, but it’s the best news I know. While we were yet sinners (nuts), God came and sat beside us and extended a love beyond anything in this world. What’s more, the very things that should disqualify us as children of God are the very things that allow God to enter in and show his grace. “You can’t have a savior if you don’t think you need saving,” a friend recently joked.

So, bring on the nuts!

Let’s embrace our authentic selves - the good, the bad, and all that lies in-between – and let God do what God does! Let him take our wounds and heal them, our unhealthy wants and transform them, and our desperate needs and fulfil them. Let’s break the chains that bind us, the ones that make us obsess over trying to appear perfect, and run free. God’s arms are opened wide. All we have to do is run.