I was awoken by this loud bang at my door, I wondered who was at the door at that time... I checked the time, oh wait, it’s already morning! It’s past 9 a.m.
I peeked through the peephole to see who it was, it was my very good friend, let’s call him Keel...
“Hey, Keel, what’s up.” I gave him a wide smile and pulled him into a warm embrace.
“Hey, were you asleep? At this time? Wow!” Keel said while looking at me in awe.
“Well.... I...” I could not finish because he interrupted me.
“Remember the program I told you about.”
“Erm, ...” what program was he talking about? I tried remembering but I couldn’t.
“What program?” I asked him.
“The program I told you about, the place I told you about that you can take all your problems there and it will be solved? The place that has so much joy, the place that when you go you wouldn’t want to leave...”
And suddenly I remembered, “ oh yes ! I remember! The place I always wanted to go so that I can receive unending joy and to also relief myself of the burden I’m carrying.”
Keel looked at me and agreed with a nod to everything I had said, then he said, “I came to fetch you, go and get dressed and let’s go.”
Without hesitation I went to freshen up, put on my best clothes and sprayed myself with my best perfume.
You see, for sometime now I haven’t been myself, a lot had gone on and I was convinced my life was a curse, so I was ready to go to the place Keel was talking about.
So with eagerness I locked the door and we made our way to the mysterious place.
Oh yea! Keel was right, the whole place was joyous, I had never seen a place so lively like this! Everyone was singing and dancing, I don’t know what made them so joyous, but this joy was contagious, before I knew it I was like them, I was singing out and dancing, I noticed there was no particular way to dance, which made the celebration even better...
After a while, people came out to give testimonies of how God has been good to them, about how they did not deserve anything good but He still favored them. They spoke about how they were burdened with sin but God lifted their burden.
Then I don’t know what came over me, I walked up to grab the microphone and spoke about how grateful I am to be alive and how I was down with sin and how I thought at that moment God has lifted every burden and has cleaned every tear from my eye, I spoke about all the bad things I did that I could remember, the ones I wasn’t proud of, the ones no one knew about, I was free, I was joyous...
Then I noticed a change in the audience, what seemed to be a once joyous place was now silent, everyone looked at me with eyes that judged me, oh wait, were my offenses greater than all of theirs?
I tried to look for solace in the eyes of the people I danced with, but I did not get any. I looked at the people who ushered me to my seat but all I saw was a hard cold stare, or did I say something wrong?
Even Keel was nowhere in sight.... I dropped the microphone and immediately left the place.
On my way home, I had so much thoughts in my head, I just came from church, church they say is the hospital for the sick, so how can they just judge me for bringing all my complains and illness to the hospital? Why were they looking at me with coldness in their eyes?
******
The church is meant for people to come and experience God with one another in peace and love.
So it’s not right to judge people who come, truth is you aren’t better than them, the fact that you sin differently than they do doesn’t give you the audacity to judge them and make them feel bad.
Treat everyone equally, because Christ died for all of us, don’t be the reason why someone finds it difficult to serve God.
God bless us all. 🙏🏾