There's A Church Within Us, O Lord

Okay so maybe just read the lyrics today and ignore the music. Dear me this hymn needs to be updated musically! It could be SO good but this is putting me to sleep! :) I picked today's hymn because of the words and it was nowhere to be found on YouTube and the only place I found it was the link I have included. Oh well. Let's just focus on those lyrics shall we?
So here's the deal about "church". WE are the church, each of us and collectively we make up the church. A building is NOT a church, it simply houses the church. A building cannot and will not save you, make you holy, create good habits, etc. And as the second verse says, "There is potential within us...." There is potential within us as the church BUT unfortunately we have mistaken the building to be the church and we have spent a lot of time and money on the actual building and neglected our own souls. Our buildings may be "pretty" but the people in those buildings have forgotten that they are actually the church. Yes, we have potential but we are smothering it with programs and bookstores and cafes and decorations for the building. The fire verse 3 talks about is barely smoldering, we have done a great job of almost completely dousing it. Verse 4, there's some building to be done...yes there is and it doesn't mean a larger building complete with a gym, bigger bookstore, etc. We, as the true church, need to be building up each other in faith. That's the building to be done, not more landscaping, better coffee in the cafe, etc. Think I'm being harsh? Take a long, HONEST look at the church and you WILL see what I'm saying.
C'mon church!

There's A Church Within Us, O Lord

Comments

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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