To Save the Living: Where Our Hearts Go in the Silence

So i was watching one of my favorite new TV shows and one scene in particular seemed to grab my attention. 

Plague threatened the city where the show takes place. A mother and son were quarantined in the hospital, the first two to show signs of the sickness. When the mother died and a nearby young lady asked the doctors why no one had told her dying child that his mother was gone, the doctor replied "We're just trying to save the living at this point."

Trying to save the living...

I felt sick to my stomach when i heard it. See i've been pouring my passions and efforts into finding a way to enhance meaning in our corporate worship. (ref. my entry: The Apex) Everything from what songs we sing, to where our hearts go during the silence. I wanted so badly for our community to experience the glory of God in a way that would overflow in our lives... but i've been ignoring those on the outside of our world here on monday nights. 

Sam Shoemaker in his poem "I Stand by the Door" says it like this:

I stand by the door.

I neither go to far in, nor stay to far out.
The door is the most important door in the world -
It is the door through which men walk when they find God.
There is no use my going way inside and staying there,
When so many are still outside and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where the door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men,
With outstretched, groping hands,
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it.
So I stand by the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for men to find that door - the door to God.
The most important thing that any man can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands
And put it on the latch - the latch that only clicks
And opens to the man's own touch.

Men die outside the door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter.
Die for want of what is within their grasp.

There was nothing lacking integrity or Godly passion in our desire to worship, but i notice that where our hearts go in the silence is a selfish place sometimes.

"God meet US here"

"Father show US Your glory"

Instead of:

"Father reveal Yourself to the lost"

"God change the heart of this city to burn for You."

So let our voices lift up in praise and cry out for a touch of life in the clamor and crescendo of corporate worship, but let our hearts cry out for those who know nothing of the joy we've found and still reach out, feeling blindly along the wall searching for the door. May we stand by the door. Never going too far in so as not to forget those people "...who have not, yet even found the door, Or the people who want to run away again from God, You can go in too deeply, and stay in too long, And forget the people outside the door.Near enough to God to hear Him, and know He is there, But not so far from people as not to hear them, And remember they are there, too."

May we save the living but NEVER forget the dying. May we guard our hearts and the places they go in the silence.