WHAT A FELLOWSHIP!

Our current crisis has taught us that fellowship is more important than we thought; isolation may even affect our mental health!

The early church was quick to recognize the significance of togetherness; Acts 2:44 reports that “All the believers were together and had everything in common.” (I wonder how well they did with that: more than 3,000 virtual strangers; did they continue to sit at table in their little familiar clumps or did they actually introduce themselves to one another? It seems that they didn’t do so well in caring indiscriminately for their widows).

When a person is seeking a new lifestyle in Christ, intimate fellowship for him/her within the church is essential. When I became a Christian at the age of twelve I lost almost overnight my old friends and even close ties to my family. Except for the fact that those older ‘pilgrims’ almost adopted me, having me home regularly for meals and even buying me a suit of clothes on one occasion, I wouldn’t have lasted long on my pilgrim journey.

What a fellowship! There is nothing like it. A young man, who is now one of my grandsons-in-law, came as a virtual stranger to one of our family Christmas celebrations. He said to my granddaughter on the way home, “Christians have so much fun; how does one become a Christian?” He is now leading his young family in ‘The Way.’

We have in our hands a most precious commodity in our fellowship with Christ and with one another; it is winsome. May God help us to be so outgoing with it, and so inclusive, that the stranger within our gates will exclaim with wonder, “What a fellowship!”