A Beautiful Letdown

Okay, I admit it. My youth is over. And in my adult life I often look at the youth of today's world with an air of condescension. They think they are smarter than they are. What do they know about life in the real world? All the same things that adults said about me when I was a teen-ager too.  And then I come across some lyrics from the band Switchfoot.  Some lyrics that let me know there are some of the younger generation who are getting the profound nature of what the church is...and what it should be.

We are a beautiful letdown, Painfully uncool.

The church of the dropouts, the losers, the sinners, the failures and the fools.

Oh what a beautiful let down, are we salt in the wound,

Let us sing the one true tune...

The church is never what you expect it to be.  You will always be let down, initially.  But when you see beyond our expectations for church, when you catch a glimpse of what God intends, of what God welcomes, the beauty is almost overwhelming.  It's those glimpses that keep me going.  The hope of what God is doing in spite of what we are doing.  He has so much more going on.  We get so sidetracked on our own agendas for what both we and the world need. Let's begin to call it what it is.  A group of sinners clinging to the hope that in Jesus God is doing something amazing. Something beyond us. Something that the world desperately needs.  Let's begin to see the beautiful in the let down.