A blanket fort or church?

I recall as a small child building a blanket fort with my sister.  These always have been, and still are so much fun!  But this particular fort wasn’t built quite as well as we hoped.  That beautiful vase simply wasn’t the best thing to hold the blanket in place on that shelf.  Yep.  Down it came.  Shattering into countless pieces.  I still remember my mum’s tears.

Have you ever broken something beyond repair?  Perhaps among the worst breakages are hopes and dreams.  Or worse – relationships.  A harsh reality can be a trail of shattered pieces lying on the road one has travelled.

I wonder why people go to church on Sunday mornings.  Could it be that their life pathways have been more strewn with pieces than most?  Could it be that they are not ‘holier than thou’, but in desperate need of restoration?

Some years ago my wife and I chatted with the doctor on duty at the neo-natal intensive care unit.  It wasn’t our plan our child come into this world eight weeks early.  We asked of potential outcomes.  His gentle and kind reply: “We don’t break them, we fix them.”

Could it be that Jesus has a remarkable CV of not breaking things, but putting them back together?  Hopes.  Dreams.  Relationships.  One of Jesus’ closest friends “wept bitterly” when he saw his shattered on the ground.  A few days later they were put back together.

Why might people go to church?  This is the Jesus we know.