Church on Christmas?

Last night I posted.

A rambling I called Church on Christmas? It was up for about six hours so chances are, a lot of you had the opportunity to read it. After a certain paragraph prompted a response (by a long time reader of this blog) in which it was clear that I caused unintentional hurt, I ended up taking it down. When I went to bed last night, I began to pray that the post would be read and interpreted the way it was intended, as a defense of my Lord and Savior. Pretty quickly it became clear to me that I should take it down. That I might ruin friendships. That it really isn't up to me to pick up my sword and attack. In the garden of Gethsemane, Christ tells Peter to put down his sword. And in Psalm 64:3 we're told, "They sharpen their tongues like swords and aim their words like deadly arrows." (Granted, that second part is out of context, but the inspired Word of God calls the tongue a sword, nonetheless.) In this case, I think what my fingers type is akin to what my tongue says. I felt like God was telling me to put down my sword. So I had my husband, who hadn't yet gone to bed, take the post down for me.

It's not that I don't think my points are valid, because I do. But I wrote the post from such a place of heartbreak over the American church that my ramblings could easily have been construed as hurtful to others. So I've eliminated the ramblings and boiled my thoughts down to four points.

The bullet points of the post go a little something like this.

-I disagree with church leadership canceling church on Sunday if they are a church that meets every other Sunday of the year.

-I think Christmas is actually the second worst day to cancel church, second only to Easter.

-This isn't a commentary on the church attenders choosing to stay home. (Or have valid reasons to not attend, like travel, illness, work, etc.) It's a commentary on church leadership.

-As a member of church leadership, I disagree with the notion that leadership needs the day off. We get Christmas off six times out of seven. We don't get days off from our faith and we shouldn't want them. Celebrating with your family certainly doesn't make someone any less of a Christian, but closing the doors to a church on a day that only exists because of Christ seems like a problematic contradiction to what we should be trying to do, which is reach the world with the Gospel of Christ.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. I went on and on in last night's post. But it really isn't necessary. I'm disappointed in our nation. All around the world, believers are fighting for the chance to assemble together but the American church is canceling Christmas services--and on Christ's birthday no less.

But it isn't my fight. Our church will be open. The Lord doesn't need me to defend Him. He certainly doesn't need me to ruin relationships. I love my fellow believers and I should not stand in judgement of them. I just disagree with their choice on this particular matter.