All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. …They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity—all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. [Acts 2:42,46-47 (NLT)]
When a friend won a trivia contest because she knew the day and year Elvis Presley died, I asked how she recalled the exact date. She replied, “I remember because August 16, 1977, was the day I traded one king for another one—it’s the day I accepted Jesus!” Indeed, it is an important date for her to remember. I don’t know when my mother-in-law became a Christ follower but my father-in-law marked his acceptance of Jesus with his baptism at the age of 17 (in 1925). I only know this because my in-laws kept a certificate attesting to his baptism in their safe deposit box along their birth certificates, passports, voter registrations, social security cards, and marriage certificate.
The day of our rebirth is as important as the date of our birth and our commitment to Christ is more important than the commitment we made to our spouse, so I understand why my friend knows the date of Elvis Presley’s death and my father-in-law treasured his baptismal certificate. The dates of my baptism and confirmation are recorded in my prayer book, but the day I clearly remember is the November afternoon my freshman year at Northwestern University when I knelt in the Alice Millar Chapel and truly accepted Jesus.
As followers of Jesus, we are members of the body of Christ or, as the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds state, the holy catholic (or universal) Church. The Christian life, however, is not meant to be lived in isolation and it is important to belong to a local community of believers. In joining a church, we make a visible commitment to Jesus and His body. Just as hanging a Cubs flag indicates our favorite team or a bumper sticker indicates our politics, our church membership is an outward and visible sign of our faith in Jesus. Joining a church is like joining a movement; we become part of something far bigger than ourselves. My in-laws understood that and cherished their church membership. In their safety deposit box, we also found the membership certificate and church bulletin from the Sunday they joined the local church they attended until their deaths.
A church provides a place to learn God’s word so that our faith is grounded. It’s the place to openly ask questions and get them answered. It’s where we find fellowship with other believers and learn from, share with, help, and encourage one another. It’s where we observe the Lord’s Supper and break bread in Christian fellowship. The church is where we pray both as a unified body and as individuals; we pray for the world at large and in answer to our brothers’ and sisters’ specific requests. The church is where we minister, not just to one another, but to the community by providing for both physical and spiritual needs. The church is where we are held accountable. Rather than complain when the pastor’s words make us squirm in our seats, we should be thankful for them. If we’re just looking for a feel-good message, there are plenty of afternoon talk shows and New Age self-help books for that. Jesus, however, was never about making us feel good—he was about making us better and making us better is what His shepherds (our pastors) are called to do!
As the body of Christ, the Apostle Paul compared us to the physical parts of a body. Although we are different parts of that one body, no part of the body can function by itself. You never see an ear, eye, or hand strolling around by itself! We need one another just as much as our feet need our legs and our lungs need the nose and mouth. Although many of us don’t remember the date we accepted Jesus or the date we joined our church, may we always honor our commitment to be a valuable part of the body of Christ.
When writing about nitroglycerin recently, I realized there’s something else in our lives much like this strange chemical that is both helpful and harmful. Like nitroglycerin, man’s capabilities are a dichotomy between good and evil, constructive and destructive, and beneficial or detrimental. The same mind capable of creating a vaccine that saves thousands of lives is capable of creating a nuclear bomb that can take those lives. James speaks of this incongruity when writing about the way we use our words, “We use our tongues to praise our Lord and Father, but then we curse people, whom God made like himself. Praises and curses come from the same mouth! My brothers and sisters, this should not happen.” [3:9-10]
“Chocolate comes from cacao beans. Beans are vegetables. Salads are made of vegetables. Therefore, chocolate is a salad!” said the sign in the bakery. “I like their logic!” I thought. If you’ve ever tried to lose weight you probably know the loopholes used by dieters. Broken cookies have no calories because they fell out when the cookies broke, anything eaten with a diet soda is calorie-free, and food eaten off someone else’s plate doesn’t count because the original calories belong to them! Technically, anything licked off a spoon while preparing food isn’t eating; it’s cooking! Furthermore, if you’re eating with someone else, you’ve kept to your diet if the other person consumes more than you! As a once struggling dieter, I know all the excuses to justify over indulging. The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves and, unfortunately, most of them aren’t as silly as these.
After being asked, “How different would the world look if everyone got what they deserved?” I started wondering. Even as a child, I knew people didn’t get what they deserved. When I was ten, I watched on television as nine black students tried to enroll in an all-white school in Little Rock, Arkansas; they were blocked by the National Guard and an angry mob of 400 angry whites. Two years earlier, on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman. I grew up in Detroit and, while discrimination and segregation were more subtle than in the South, it existed. I lived in a large home with a big yard on a tree-lined street but any bus trip “downtown” told me that the people of color didn’t live in neighborhoods like mine. There may not have been “colored” drinking fountains or “white only” bathrooms but there was a six-foot high, one-foot wide, and half-mile long wall segregating one black community from a neighboring white one. Many other invisible and more impenetrable walls existed within our divided city.
The two were seated next to us on the patio; the frail elderly woman was the mother and the younger woman her daughter. After pondering the menu, the mother had all sorts of questions about it. In no rush to order, she dithered over her entrée choice and, once food was served, she lingered over it. As I observed the two women, I could see and hear the daughter’s growing frustration and impatience with her mother. They reminded me of the times I took my mother-in-law out to lunch. Having “been there and done that,” I wanted to tell the daughter to be patient. One day, mom would be gone and she’d wish they had more days together.
Devotions of the Heart 