Devoted Time
Ephesians 4:1-2 –
‘I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.’
Acts 2:42-47 –
‘All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as they had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people.’
Time – there’s these positive negatives around time…too much time on your hands? That’s not a good thing! ‘I’m super busy right now’ (which for some people equates to ‘I’m super important’), time is money, not enough time…
Even in a season when some of us have more time, we end up cramming another Zoom in, spending extra time on social media or the latest Netflix show. Somehow we don’t have time to nurture the most important thing - relationship!
Time creates space to know one another and build strong, rich and deep connections. My family and I moved in the summer to Birmingham and it's been hard to make time to connect with others because there aren’t the natural spaces and times to do that in this pandemic. But it's one of the key elements of all community, our relationships need time.
Devotion two is about fellowship or perhaps in more modern ‘speak’, community. The early church devoted themselves to community, to each other. You can see it at work when you read the passage above from Acts, these people were sold out for each other.
What a huge challenge!
Life like that at the moment seems an impossibility. Even meeting together isn’t the norm for us, eating in each other homes - we’ve not done that for a while either. So what can we do? How can we be devoted to community when connection is so limited? There must be ways to maintain our devotion to fellowship/community.
Proverbs 17:17 has this wisdom for us – ‘A friend is loving at all times; and a brother or sister is born for adversity.’ (Note this is not born to create adversity!) It definitely feels like adversity right now but it’s ‘community through relationships’ that can sustain us. We need to keep finding ways to love others, listen well and encourage one another – it’s a good start in recreating this community we see in Acts.
Which relationship can you pay attention to today? Who can you encourage? How?
Prayer – Lord, we pray that you would create in us a love for one another that produces devotion to community. We pray together that we will find new ways to bless one another, to share each other’s burdens and to inspire and encourage each other - for your glory, and for your reputation. Come Holy Spirit, fill us afresh to overflowing so we can be this Christ community in the world.