Hit The Ground Humble
“Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brethren, admonishthe idle, encourage the fainthearted,help the weak,be patient with them all. See thatno one repays anyone evil for evil, but alwaysseek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing,give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1st Thessalonians 5:13-19.
Dear Friends & Family,
This afternoon I watched a real-life illustration play out right in front of my living room window. It was a scene that epitomizes what the Lord so often does though His Church.
A group of girls were walking up a hill to do their barn chores. They walk up as a group and look like a bunch of pied pipers as cats are signaled from near and far that it’s about to be chow time in the barn yard. As the girls reached the upper middle part of the hill, the part where the ice is the thickest, one of the girls began to slip. She fought it for a good 3 to 5 seconds but finally succumbed to gravity and the slickness by falling to the ground. The fall was nothing hard…just a normal whoop, whoop, whoop…boom. I do it myself at least two or three times a winter. (My grandfather used to tell me: “It’s good for a man to fall to the ground every once in a while, it reminds him who he is before his Creator.”) We know this gal and she is from the Seattle area and doesn’t quite have her Eastern Washington “winter legs” under her yet. After 20 years of being out here, I’m still not sure what my excuse is.
Well, the other gals waited for her to get up and get back into the group but with the steepness of the hill and the icy surface, she couldn’t do it. The more she tried, the more she slipped and slid down the icy hill. After a period of patient waiting and no little amount of giggling on everybody’s part, especially the newbie gal, the rest of the group, led by the oldest, came back down the treacherous hill to help lift her to her feet. They all brushed the snow off her, made an arm in arm climbing chain, and trekked the rest of the hill together in a grouped-up unison. The whole ordeal only lastly a few minutes, but it was a fitting picture of how the Lord uses His people in Church community for the purpose of healing.
Positive peer pressure to admonish or rebuke one another, from one redeemed believer to another, can be a powerful tool and the Lord often uses it as so. In a healthy Christian community, the “One Another’s” of Biblical writ come alive as the Church loves and admonishes each other. Take one unhealthy, emotionally wounded, spiritually stunted person and place them smack dab in the center of a group of spiritually and emotionally healthy people. Do this, and over time, as long as there is humility and teachability, you will witness the transformation take place in the unhealthy one. No amount of therapy can do what God can do through His people, through His Church, through Christian community. God has designed it to be so.
You don’t need to be a professional pastor, elder or deacon to be a loving, effective neighbor to the least of these. Admonish, encourage, help and be patient with your fellow man. Do good to everyone. In so doing, you will fulfill the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.