Daily devotion – Thursday 27th May 2021
John 13:34 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
The words, ‘one another’, occur repeatedly throughout the New Testament. Words that can only be fulfilled by being part of the Church in a true physical sense.
A few years ago in Stockholm, Sweden, an 84-year-old woman sat for 2 months on her balcony before a neighbour discovered she was dead. A neighbour realised something was wrong, when she saw the woman sitting on her balcony around the clock, despite freezing temperatures. “I accused myself for not having seen her earlier,” she said later. “I hope this dreadful story makes us better at keeping in touch with our old neighbours.”
We live in a fast-paced world where only the fit survive, it is growing increasingly easier to feel dehumanised.
– We make a phone call and ‘voice mail’ takes over
– You go to the bank and there is no counter with people behind it
– If you need money at 2:00 am, you can go to an ATM machine, say nothing, and retrieve your money
– You go to the supermarket and check out your own groceries – no human contact necessary
– We tap for making payments, no need to talk to the service provider, the handling of cash is considered unclean
– All contacts are by email now, no letters written by hand
Machines cannot hug you when you are grieving. Machines don’t care or listen to you when you need a sounding board to explain your situation. Machines never affirm you when you are low or confront you when you are wrong.
When you need reassurance and hope and strength to go on, you cannot replace the essential presence of another human being.
Jesus Christ entered our world to save PEOPLE. Church is where the PEOPLE of God gather to fulfil the call of God to reach the lost.
People with names and personalities and fingerprints and faces.
Don’t drift into the indifferent, impersonal, new trend of doing Church in your lounge room.
There is no substitute for the personal touch.
See you tonight as we pray – one for another.