seeing that the Lord gets it. He created
us. He understand us.
And when we’re not measuring
up to the ideal, that’s nothing He
hasn’t seen before. That has been the
history for literally thousands of years.
It’s unlikely that we can mess things
up worse than other people already
have. You name it, people have done
it – greed, promiscuity, deceit, human
sacrifice.
But still God wanted to be with
His people. Still He was reaching out
to them – calling them to turn back
to Him, promising restoration and comfort and rebuilding. No matter what
you’ve done or where you are in your life, the Lord wants you to be part of His
New Church.
The Church has always been for real people. The New Church is for real
people. It’s not something out there. Yes, the Word and the teachings of the
New Church are perfect and beautiful and Divine. But if nobody reads them
and thinks about them and tries to live them then they’re just a pile of dead
trees and ink. Or like the most beautiful church ever built with nobody inside
it. The Church does not exist apart from people. (Secrets of Heaven 1068,
4292:1)
As soon as we try to read and think about and live the teachings of the
Church we run into difficulties. We battle to understand things. We battle even
more to apply even basic things we understand. We get conceited and selfrighteous about the little we do know. And so we have to get over ourselves and
get back on our feet and keep going back to the Lord to try again.
In no other way does the New Church become something real in us and
real in the world in general. This is what it means to be part of the Lord’s
Church – to be part of the people called out by the Lord to follow Him – to be
part of the New Jerusalem.
In the final vision at the end of the Bible, the Lord could have just called
it “The Holy City” with no name attached or with some new name that we’d
never heard before. Instead He chose to name it Jerusalem – a city with all its
history, good and bad.
But it was the new Jerusalem. “He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold,
I make all things new.’” (Revelation 21:5) It is a city and a church for God’s
imperfect people that He will make new if they will let Him. Jerusalem’s past
was corrupt but He made it new. Our own pasts have not been perfect but we
People in the Church
are those who have the
Church in them. People
in the New Church are
people who have the
New Church in them –
in their minds, in t