I Wonder...

Sometimes I wonder what God thinks of things that we have and think are so important to our worship.

Our church building used to belong to another denomination and there are two huge pictures of Christ up front on either side of the center curtain (which has a plain wooden cross hanging in front of it). These pictures look like they are painted right on the wall. (You know the ones where the artist makes Jesus look European rather than Jewish. On one - He is standing at the door knocking and the other as a shepherd holding a lamb. ) I look at them every Sunday and sometimes wonder what God thinks about our having them up there. I actually like them. They remind us of Scripture. But we don't know what he looked like!

What seems so curious is that if we decided to do something else up front we would have to paint over them and that would seem somehow sac religious. WHY? They are just pictures and no one knows what Jesus looked like anyway. The bible doesn't describe him. I wouldn't mind if they did something else up front which would mean not having those pictures but, I guess I wouldn't want to be the one to paint over them! (?) Strange -especially considering that I wouldn't have voted to put them there in the first place.

Last Sunday our pastor mentioned a church in Old Greenwich, Conn. that has a 10' cross standing in front of the pulpit - not behind! To illustrate it he had one of the teens come up and stand there a while with his arms out (like a cross) to give us an idea where that cross is situated in the front. It was interesting visualizing that huge cross - not in the background - but sort of "in your face" there! At 10 feet tall it would be -not just in front of - but loom above of the pulpit! Visual stuff speaks volumes , I guess. It pretty much shouts the reason we are gathered there in the first place. I'd like to see the inside of that church sometime.