{"id":200,"date":"2005-07-06T16:32:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-06T22:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=200"},"modified":"2010-09-29T21:41:18","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T02:41:18","slug":"piecemeal-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/piecemeal-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Piecemeal lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend I had the joy of seeing the Body of Christ truly in action.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I&#8217;ve been looking in the wrong direction, but this weekend I found it, in a cowboy church in Crosby, Texas.<\/p>\n<p>A body of believers who believed in something far greater than themselves.<\/p>\n<p>A body of believers who realized that their small, sometimes menial tasks were just as important as everyone elses.<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t matter if they were sweeping floors, pouring tea or pushing a button on a sound board &#8212; they were there to serve, and they never questioned how important their role was.<\/p>\n<p>They were there to help a bunch of crazy wrestlers put on a couple shows to share the Gospel. And whatever that took &#8212; they were going to help put on the best show ever.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t think of anything they could have done better. Well, other than maybe give earplugs to my roommates to help drown out my snoring (Sorry about that.)<\/p>\n<p>NOTE FROM CHRIS: You should have heard it &#8212; oh wait you probably did. What meteorologists thought was an approaching thunderstorm was actually Blundell snoring. By the way, Breathe Rights &#8212; worthless.<\/p>\n<p>Scripture reminds us that we&#8217;re all an important part of the body, no matter how menial or piecemeal our lives may seem.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;By means of His one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which He has the final say in everything.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As a ring announcer for the CWF sometimes it&#8217;s easy to think, &#8220;My job is not really that important. I just talk. Anyone can do that. The wrestlers have the really important jobs.&#8221;\u009d Or, &#8220;You know I&#8217;m really the important one here. Without me, no one gets welcomed to the ring. I think I&#8217;ll just say whatever I want and introduce people as I see fit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But whether other people can or can&#8217;t do my job, it&#8217;s my job and it&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve been asked to do. And while I may want to try and steal the limelight, if I&#8217;m not working as a member of the team, nothing will get completed &#8212; and I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;d get a number of vicious chops in the process.<\/p>\n<p>But what if my sound guy gets bored with being a sound guy? What if he wants to be in the ring getting beat down and tossed around like a bag of potatoes?<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly we don&#8217;t have sound or entrance music and our ministry becomes a bunch of guys with sore throats from trying to yell over the crowd.<\/p>\n<p>What if a cook in the kitchen decides she wants to prepare Indian cuisine instead of steak and potatoes? <\/p>\n<p>While the rest of her team is baking potatoes and grilling steak, she comes along and starts throwing curry and asafoetida or hing all over everything.<\/p>\n<p>The otherwise wonderful, simple meal is suddenly ruined.<\/p>\n<p>The Apostle Paul writes, &#8220;If Foot said, &#8220;I&#8217;m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don&#8217;t belong to this body,&#8221; would that make it so?  If Ear said, &#8220;I&#8217;m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don&#8217;t deserve a place on the head,&#8221; would you want to remove it from the body?  If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Each person has their own place. And each place is valued just like the rest &#8212; no matter where you are or what you do.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn&#8217;t be a body, but a monster.  What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No matter how independent you think you are or how unimportant you are &#8212; you have value and no one else can take your place.<\/p>\n<p>As we wrapped up our second show in Crosby Sunday night I began talking with a church member who had been working the parking lot detail earlier that evening.<\/p>\n<p>He told me he was proud to be able to play such a &#8220;little part&#8221;\u009d in something much greater than all of this. <\/p>\n<p>As we talked, I remembered times that I&#8217;ve been stuck in parking lots with poor direction and communication.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve sat in parking lots for hours as people try to direct traffic back on to the roads.<\/p>\n<p>What seemed menial and trivial to him was a blessing to everyone who attended one of our shows.<\/p>\n<p>No matter what part you might have, where ever you might be, you&#8217;ve been placed there for a reason and without each person in place &#8212; the show (or dinner, or ball game, or office, or church service) would never be the same.<\/p>\n<p>Strive for excellence. Work as if everything you do depends solely on you &#8212; because when it all comes down to it &#8212; it does.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part&#8230; If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend I had the joy of seeing the Body of Christ truly in action. Maybe I&#8217;ve been looking in the wrong direction, but this weekend I found it, in a cowboy church in Crosby, Texas. A body of believers who believed in something far greater than themselves. A body of believers who realized &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/piecemeal-lives\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Piecemeal lives<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,2090],"tags":[3839,172,141,1538,3840],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-columns-reflections","tag-body-of-christ","tag-christian-wrestling-federation","tag-cwf","tag-lives","tag-roles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-3e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}