Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [18]
The man looked back and said, “No, but aren’t they all our children?”2
Indeed. Those who suffer belong to all of us. And if all of us respond, there is hope.
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:
If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!
(Eccl. 4:9–10 NIV)
O Lord, I have been called to be part of a holy community. You did not call me in isolation but placed me in the body of Christ, along with every other believer in Jesus throughout the world in every age. Let us grow as a team, work as a team, worship as a team, weep, laugh, and live as a team. Grant me the wisdom and the strength to partner with you and with my brothers and sisters in Christ. For Jesus’ sake and in his name I pray, amen.
CHAPTER 6
Open Your Door;
Open Your Heart
They ate together in their homes,
happy to share their food with joyful hearts.
—ACTS 2:46 (NCV)
If a voice could be a season, hers was springtime. “Hello,” she sang. “Thank you for calling.” I needed a kind welcome. The sky was pouring buckets of rain. Lightning had caused blackouts, and storms were jamming the traffic. News reports were telling drivers to stay off the roads. But I had a flight to catch.
So I called the airlines. They would know if the flight was late or canceled. They would be the calm within the storm. And for a butterfly’s blink of a moment, she was. “Hello, thank you for calling . . .”
But then it came. Before I could thank her in return, the voice continued, “For quality assurance this call may be monitored . . .”
Not again.
Ancient sailors feared falling off the edge of the earth. Our pioneering forefathers dreaded blinding blizzards. The first missionaries to Africa sliced trails into dense forests. But none of our ancestors faced what you and I face: the Bermuda Triangle called computerized telephone service.
“Press one,” she said, “for domestic flights.”
“Press two for international.”
“Press three if you know your flight number and the name of your congressman.”
“Press four if you are a frequent flier in the central time zone with no children.”
“Press five if the nine digits of your Social Security number total more than sixty . . .”
It was all I could do to keep up! I finally pressed a number, and wouldn’t you know it. I committed the equivalent of telephone harakiri. I was put on hold. For the foreseeable future I would be trapped in the underground cable cavern, doomed to spend hours listening to Kenny G and Barry Manilow.
Oh to have heard a human voice. To have spoken to a real person. To have received a human greeting. Is it just me, or is human contact going the way of the snow leopard? There was a time when every activity spurred a conversation. Service your car; greet the attendant. Deposit a check at the bank; chat with the teller about the weather. Buy a gift, and speak with the salesclerk. Not now. You can gas up with a credit card, make deposits online, and order a gift over the Internet. You can cycle through a day of business and never say hello.
Call us a fast society, an efficient society, but don’t call us a personal society. Our society is set up for isolation. We wear earbuds when we exercise. We communicate via e-mail and text messages. We enter and exit our houses with gates and garage-door openers. Our mantra: “I leave you alone. You leave me alone.”
Yet God wants his people to be an exception. Let everyone else go the way of computers and keyboards. God’s children will be people of hospitality.
Long before the church had pulpits and baptisteries, she had kitchens and dinner tables. “The believers met together in the Temple every day. They ate together in their homes, happy to share their food with joyful hearts” (Acts 2:46 NCV). “Every day in the Temple and in people’s homes they continued teaching the people and telling the Good News—that Jesus is the Christ” (Acts 5:42 NCV).
Even a casual reading of the New Testament unveils the house as the primary tool of the church.