Imagine what would happen if your knee suddenly decided it wanted to be a nose and jumped from it's normal place right up onto the middle of your face. That would certainly complicate things. What if you had a bad cold and your head was stopped up? Would you blow your knee? Your voice would sure sound peculiar, if you were even be able to talk at all! What about your leg, how would it work without a knee to hold it together? Would the bottom part just fall off, or just sort of go flopping along? What if your big toe talked an eye into changing places. How weird would that be? No more binocular vision, no more depth perception, and all you would see with one of your eyes would be the inside of your sock, and maybe some lint. Plus, you would look really strange with a big toe hanging out of your eye socket. Say goodbye to bilateral symmetry. Or what if your left ear got tired of being an ear and decided if it can't be a finger then it would just leave? So, there it goes, off to who knows where. Now, not only do you have a knee in the middle of your face, and a toe hanging from an eyesocket, but now your left ear has bailed out, leaving a peculiar looking hole in the side of your head.

What if the various body parts got to arguing with each other over which one was the most important? What if the mouth decided the liver wasn't important and the liver got it's feelings hurt and went off and pouted and then went on strike. The body wouldn't last long with no liver functions. Imagine the brain and heart got all puffed up and decided to have a contest to see which one was really the most important by stopping work. It wouldn't take long before it wouldn't matter anymore which one was most important because the body would be dead. 

All that sounds pretty funny, I guess. But that is just the kind of thing Paul talks about folks doing in the Body of Christ, the Church. In 1st Corinthians 12 Paul talks a good bit about how we are all different parts of the Body of Christ and should all work together, without jealousy or being puffed up and arrogant. He also says we should all support each other and look after each other. Paul teaches that there are many different kinds of parts to the Body, Each part has an important role to play in the functioning of the Body, the local church. Finding out what our roles are and then plugging in where we belong will make for a healthy Body. Fighting and arguing and being selfish with everybody struggling for position and trying to get their own way will kill the Body just as dead as a man with no liver, heart, or brain.

What if everyone wanted to preach and nobody wanted to cut the grass or clean the church? Well, we would be a noisy bunch in a really nasty building that we probably couldn't even get to for all the grown up weeds. Or what if everyone decided they wanted to teach Sunday School? Who would they teach? Teachers need students and if you don't believe it just try standing up and talking to yourself in an empty room for 45 minutes sometime. Some of the most important body parts may not even have anything to do with having church. Their role in our assembly might be to sit in the pew and recharge their battery for the coming week. The most important role in the church might just be someone that goes to work five or six days a week in a non-christian environment. By their quiet and humble example they shine a little light into the darkness.

It may take a bit of trial and error to find just where you fit in. Your place may not be where you think it is. You may have been an ear somewhere else but what Trees really needs now is a little toe. Maybe the foot that holds the whole rest of the church up is just a little shaky and needs a really stable little toe to go in and sort of settle things down. God does work in mysterious ways sometimes. Until we find our niche and start doing whatever function it is we are designed for, I don't believe we will be really content and happy. It just won't feel right until we find our spot and lock into it and get busy in God's Kingdom.