About a year ago I was doing some research on the Church of Christ. I googled “Church of Christ” and came upon some interesting results. One of the most intriguing was Amy Hughes’ Abston Church of Christ. Amy is a computer programmer by day and a Lego hobbist by night. She did study architecture in the past. I encourage you to go to the link and check out the detail of this work. She also has some other projects, but this one is cool. Imagine a building 7 feet by 5 1/2 feet by 30 inches high all made of Legos. The project took a year and 1/2 to build. I can see why.

So, where am I going with all this? Being an artist myself, I can appreciate the amount of hard work that went into this project. I enjoy creating music. However, the pictures of this project are just that, pictures. Just the other day I was browsing through my art book from college. There are some great pictures of famous artwork. But the pictures themselves don’t do justice to the actual paintings. Part of the syllabus for that Fine Arts class required a trip to an art museum. I decided to take my wife to the Indianpolis Museum of Art. It was amazing to see the actual artwork up close and personal instead of from a book. No one would want a fake Van Gogh, when they can have the real thing. The same goes for us as Christians. Just as the Abston Church of Christ is made up of all plastic, sometimes we Christians are just as plastic; we are fakes of the real thing. Jesus hasn’t called us to be fake or plastic. He wants us to be real. People have real problems, real hurts, real happiness. What if the body of Christ could open up? What if we could take off the mask that we hide behind? What kind of healing could happen?

I ask these questions leading up to tomorrow’s message. We are looking at the “Stained Glass Masquerade.” How many of us put up a false facade because we think that’s what others want? What if we did what Christ wanted His body to do?