The Life Within & Without

I am thirty-eight years old and keenly aware that my body is not twenty-eight or eighteen anymore. I am beginning to understand what “old” people like me were talking about when I was ten or twenty years younger. To maintain a healthy body moving forward I need to take good care of the life within and the life without. In other words, I need to eat right, exercise, and take care of the inner workings of this wonder of life, while at the same time maintain healthy relationships and participation in the world around me that I enter each day.
The church is no different. We are, as the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, a body. As such we have many different parts and those parts have different functions. In order for the church, the body of Christ, to remain healthy, we must maintain a healthy tension between the life within and the life without.
I have often found that two primary camps emerge within a church family. The first is of those who are determined that we should primarily be concerned about the life within. We should make sure we are knowing each other, discipling each other, walking with each other, and caring well for one another. Who can argue with how important that is? No one, of course. Jesus did say it was by our love for one another that people would know we are his disciples (John 13:35). The second camp is of those who are determined that we should primarily be concerned about the life without. We should make sure we are serving the poor, doing acts of justice in society, planting churches, and sharing the Good News far and wide. Who can argue with how important that is? No one, of course. Jesus did say we are to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20).
But a funny thing can happen if we’re not careful. These two camps can come to believe that theirs is more important than the other. They can even come to suspect that the other is wrong and misguided. Whoa! Hold the phone. God has wired his church so that these two realities, the life within and the life without, are held in perfect tension. Rather than judge the other we ought to celebrate our need for one another. We ought to rejoice in the wideness of God, the opportunity we have to lean on each other’s strengths, and never make light of what it takes to be healthy as a body.
After all, my thirty-eight year old body is going to need that same within and without balance if I am to see forty-eight and beyond.