Devotion for January 28, 2016

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27; NIV).

            You know, it wasn’t a bad sermon last weekend, and there are some thoughts we could take from it. Chief among them was this: in our congregations, we belong to each other as the parts of the body belong to each other and as the members of a family belong to each other. Let’s just reflect for a second on the beginning of that sentence. In our congregations we belong to each other. So often we think of the church in some abstract sense, so abstract that in fact the church becomes irrelevant. We think that of our spiritual life in terms of me and God. No wonder so many Americans are able to ‘worship’ by watching something on the internet at home. We reason, “I’m here; God’s here; what more do I need?” What we need is a recognition that God in His wisdom places Christians together in real communities, in real congregations. I understand that congregations can be a source of real frustration. The music can be poor; the preaching can be inarticulate; the people can be difficult. Look at your average congregation and you many not easily identify it as the glorious reality that is the body of Christ. And yet woven into the very fabric of the New Testament is the clear teaching: Christians are gathered in congregations, and in those congregations they share God’s life together.