Who do you not see when you are in church?
Which people are there but invisible to you? And to which people is your attention naturally drawn? Young families? Students? The Lord Jesus often viewed things in a rather different way from us, and noticed the people we overlook. Contemplating worshippers at the temple he drew his disciples’ attention to a poor old widow (Luke 21.1-4).
Lonely in church
Here’s a story of an old widow in our congregation who we overlooked. We didn’t overlook her completely. Some of our godly women spend much time looking after her and having her around for Sunday lunches. But she tended to get neglected in the turmoil of the after service coffee time, with no one talking with her. We quite rightly received a letter of rebuke from her carer. ‘Lonely in church! It’s not good enough!’ We had to take that on the chin and pull our socks up. We weren’t seeing her the way Jesus would have done. But, back to the story.
The re-emergence of heavy shepherds
What would you think if you received a letter from your church leaders that read like this? ‘Are church members …