Kevin Ware, Pain, and the Church

If you watched any basketball at all yesterday or even a SportsCenter update, you know that Kevin Ware of Louisville had a horrific, gruesome, terrible injury as he went to block a shot.  You don't have to search hard to find video of it.

The Queen, being a physical therapist by training, has some sort of dark, malevolent obsession with bad injuries like Ware's.  She used to have pictures of injuries up in the clinic where she worked.  What kind of fascination is that?  Yikes!

But what is interesting to me is the reaction of his teammate.  Tears.  Vomit.  Almost passing out.  On hands and knees.  Disbelief.  Shock.  Pain.

And that's church.

When we weep with those who weep (Romans 12.15), that's the kind of reaction when phone calls come with cancer on the other end, when relationships fracture and ooze into households, when pink slips instead of pay checks show up.  Disbelief.  Shock.  Pain.  Tears.  Vomit (if necessary).

But did you see what happened after that?

Louisville came back and won.  It took guts, courage, heart, effort, sweat, and everything else you can imagine.  They left it all on the court.

That's also church.

You don't just weep.  You help.  You don't just cry.  You act.  You don't just sit there in pain, you persevere in it - yours or theirs.

It's church.

But that's just me thinking thoughts...