I shall take a break from our current adventures for this one. It's time for a bit of a theological dose. A delightful commentary on the Christian Church's "If it's God's will" line. On the surface, a most incredible truth. Here we have ridiculously hair-doed hubby and future daddy knowing that if God is behind this, has not a better place for us, that He will help us to have all that we need in this place. My current realization, however, is how often we Christians use this line to relieve ourselves from assisting one another, claiming this truth as an escape. "If God wills it, He will provide." You would climb a very slippery slope trying to deflect that one. What if His "providing" includes us helping one another? God forbid. We in the church run screaming at the first utterance of need by one of our own. It is the stranger in need that we specialize in: the beggar, the addict, the reformed sinner. For a year or so we'll throw all our resources at building up that persons spiritual understanding, care for them in the midst of their doubts and relapses and all the rest. At some point later then, when that person's newness wears off, it is expected that they have moved out of the period of need to a period of perpetual stability. If they want support now they should find it alone, not dare mention their needs out loud. Sadly, it seems that all too often it is non-Christians that have a better handle on this situation. They may have an array of reasons that excuse them from helping a friend but it would rarely be that well, "God will provide," so it is unnecessary that we do anything. People outside the church would not so quickly expect a recovering friend to achieve that perpetual, "I'm blessed and nothing less," state that church expects.

"A need? Here? How? Who hasn't been praying, hasn't been giving to the church, hasn't been reading their Bible?" This train of thought may be entirely subconscious, unknown, but it is the prevailing church attitude. Doubt and need, they are perceived as errors in the structure of the church itself. They ignite fear that perhaps not everyone present in the fold is completely happy with the state of their religion. As long as I have traveled I have seen this reality and its creeping influence in the church. People there are programmed to be always happy, never in need. It is devastating. We lose track of even the methods of expression. One who slips up and shares such a thing must quickly cover their ill traveled tracks and claim church cliche solutions for their situation. "God will provide. I know that He will and I just need to have more faith." It has sadly become another of those distance-maintaining cliches.

Why do we remember Christ, the God-man, and His twelve ne'r-do-wells? Was it their social status? A poor carpenter leading a band of gems that included a tax collector and fishermen. We would have expected Jesus to spend His days with the learned of the church, no? Those who understood the needs of the people and understood what it meant to love and serve God. It seems that even in His time, Jesus recognized that to find men that could be taught to live as He, He must look outside of religion. Perhaps it wasn't a religious climate so unlike our own today. A time of church where real need was an unacceptable and unwanted reality. A time of church's self service rather than service of those about in real need. We remember Christ and His misfits because of what they did when they encountered need. Did they, when faced with it, claim that divine intervention was sure, was near, pray, and depart? Certainly not. They, most especially He, recognized that they were the divine intervention. They touched the bleeding wounds of the dying and the outcast, fed the hunger of the empty stomach, spoke to the doubts and the confusion and despairs of the people of their time. Rather than from, they ran to all places of need and prayed that God would allow them to fill it.

Christians globally are in need of a drastic change of attitude. No more screaming out prayers for God to rescue their lands, for God to rescue individuals in desperate practical and spiritual need all around them. No more telling their "friends" in church that they will pray that God will provide that person's need while in the back of their mind they have decided they can do nothing to fill it. It is time to become the radical intervention that we are constantly praying will come.