death and renewal cycles

Today I’ve been thinking about death and renewal cycles.

I guess what I mean is the expectation of permanence that we (or at least I) bring to most things in life.  Everything will last. Everything will endure and everything that doesn’t needs to get fixed until it does last.  So, we prop things up…we stretch it…we hold it up until we can’t keep up the charade.

I don’t know if that makes sense or not…

but, it reminds me of a relationship i had in highschool.  we dated 10 months past the point of general “badness”–where, at least, I knew there was no love in between us.  Why? Because we were trying to fix things. We were working on our relationship.  And those 10 months were hellish. They ended hellishly too.  The whole thing was appalling.  the thing is that we couldn’t quit. we couldn’t look at each other and say: “it’s over”.

kinda makes me wonder how many churches or denominations have been living out that scenario for, oh i don’t know, 500 years…working on it…fixing the problems…stirring up the embers..

because we don’t know how to say: “the life is gone. let’s move on”

it, for me, goes back to that sense of permanence…and that’s what church planters today and house church guru’s are all selling.  i actually heard one guy say: “come to our house church…join our movement…our churches last…”

really? and even if that weren’t a whopping lie…would that even be realistically desirable?

does any living thing live forever? is it supposed to? or do living things (and the church is a living creature…a SHE…a Bride…a Body) all have death and renewal cycles?

Maybe what we need are new ways to live well and die well.  Maybe what we need are new forms that make saying “it’s over” acceptable…where “it’s over” might actually mean “it’s just beginning”.

isn’t that the nature of resurrection?

isn’t death required to be raised anew?

i don’t know…