Holy Week is behind us.  What difference has it made?  It’s easy to feel a little let down after such a special time is past.  That got me to thinking about the huge difference the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus have made in this world in the two millennia since it happened.  What if Jesus hadn’t come back to life after his wrongful death?  If Jesus had stayed dead, his followers would have quietly gone back home to wistfully remember the short-lived glory days of a miracle-working teacher.  But because they witnessed him alive after his death, they were motivated to step forward and bravely tell the world what they saw.  The ripples that emanated from that little band have changed the course of human history.  Oh, I know, his followers haven’t always acted like him.  There have been wars and schisms and many other hurtful things in the history of Christianity.  But for today, I want to get personal and revel in the huge benefits my family and I have received from the Church.

Husband and I were talking the other day about where we’d be if Jesus hadn’t come back to life.  We tried to imagine where we’d be had there never been Christianity.  We decided there was a good chance that Husband would still be in the land of his ancestors and likely participating in their religion.  He’d be a Druid.  If Saint Patrick hadn’t have fearlessly stood up to that satanic folk religion by teaching the Gospel of Christ, and if the Pilgrims hadn’t bravely come to the New World for religious freedom, and founded a struggling colony in the name of Jesus,  Husband wouldn’t be a Christian or be here in the USA.  If Christians from the Roman Empire wouldn’t have bothered to evangelize the cruel Goths, I would most likely still be in Western Europe where my forebears were members of a pagan and warlike society.  I wouldn’t even know about the one true God because I wouldn’t be able to read the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jews who knew him would have more than likely kept their religion to themselves.  

This is conjecture, of course, but what isn’t conjecture is the impact of the Church on us personally.  In the physical realm, Christian hospitals have been key to our very lives. Our oldest son was born in a Swedish Covenant Hospital (under the auspices of a Christian church by that name) in Chicago after a harrowing pregnancy.  The skilled and gentle obstetrician had been a missionary doctor in Africa. Our third child was born in a clinic run by a Christian doctor and his wife.  Husband had life-prolonging surgery in the Adventist Hospital in Portland, Oregon when he was thirty-one years old.  The skilled and kind surgeon who repaired his one functioning kidney had been a missionary doctor. 

Our youngest two children were born in the safe haven of a Baptist Hospital in the jungles of Borneo.  It was here  where our eleven-year-old daughter was snatched from the clutches of death after contracting an often fatal tropical disease.  Husband was treated there for disease and broken bones, and I for infections.  We saw firsthand the life-saving interventions of this hospital for friends and neighbors in the jungle making the difference between life and death.  Not to mention the small airplanes piloted and repaired by missionaries that connected patients with the hospital.  Upon our return from Asia, we settled in the then small city of Bend, Oregon which had a Catholic hospital that was generous and merciful.  (It has since come under secular ownership and has different priorities.)  We were again the beneficiaries of care for our family’s illnesses and injuries.  

Then there are the intellectual benefits we have personally experienced thanks to Christian organizations.  We didn’t attend the Ivy League colleges such as Yale, Harvard, or Princeton that were founded by church groups, but we did graduate from a Christian institute that didn’t charge tuition yet prepared us to be contributing members of society.  As an added benefit I met my dear husband there!

Emotionally, I can’t imagine the mess I’d be if it weren’t for churches. In the days when divorce was uncommon and single mothers struggled in society, my mother and I had the solid resource of a church family.  Although there was upheaval in my young life, I always had the certainty that on Sunday I would be embraced with kindness and encouragement, truth and joy.  I was taught from kindergarten age to memorize Scripture so I would know how to act and where to find peace.  I admired my Sunday school teachers and wanted to be like them. 

Although my musical skills are shockingly deficient, I truly enjoyed the music at church.  One church I attended while young had an impressive pipe organ and a beautiful grand piano both of which enthralled me.  I knew it took discipline to play well and so I practiced my piano lessons so I could play like the musicians at church, but alas, it just wasn’t a gift I’d been given.  Yet, to this day I admire and enjoy good musicians.  (Did you hear the Andrea Bocelli Easter concert?)

Some of my earliest exposure to art was in my church.  There were several stained glass windows that mesmerized me as a child.  Sometimes I would turn in the pew and stare at the light pouring thru rich, colored glass and try to figure out which Bible stories the artful windows were depicting.  Then there were the beautiful,  famous paintings of Jesus on the walls of my Sunday school classrooms.  Besides the calming effect of a kind Shepherd straining to rescue a lost lamb, or a gentle Man knocking at a door, or a suffering Man kneeling in prayer, I also noticed the beautiful details.  Every Sunday I enjoyed a little take-home paper that had a beautiful illustration of the Bible story we had learned.  I can’t help but feel that my early exposure to these lovely paintings helped to form my love of portraiture which I have passionately pursued for the last four decades.

Husband’s parents grew up without much spiritual input. But when Husband was a pre-schooler, his mother started attending a little neighborhood church because she felt her children should grow up learning about God.  Eventually, Husband’s father agreed to come along.  Both put their trust in Jesus and learned about the Bible in that small church.  And so did their three children who grew up to serve others through their churches.

As adults, Husband and I have a treasure that is beyond reckoning.  It is the friends we love from every church we have attended in our many moves.  Those friends have enriched our lives in countless ways.  I can’t imagine doing life without them,  yet we would have never met them if it weren’t for church.

Uh, oh, this is getting long and yet I’ve only mentioned a small part of the influence of the Church of Jesus on our lives!  Think back over your lifetime.  How has the Church benefitted you?  And yes, we have all been hurt in a church.  That’s because the church is made up of imperfect humans like me and you who don’t always follow Jesus.  But that  doesn’t give us a pass to avoid church for the rest of our lives.  We don’t fault hospitals for having sick people in them.  We shouldn’t complain about churches that have sinners in them.