CHURCH

 

  My chubby Calico cat, Isabel, lets me know when the kettle is boiling. She meows over and over until she gets my attention. She knows that when I am studying on my lap-top everything else goes out of my mind. She also knows that if the steam builds up too much in the kitchen then the fire alarm will go off. Such a piercing, awful sound that sends a person into a panic and Isabel to run around in circles, just like the little chicken that screeched, “the sky is falling in!”

  We’re a team, my kitty-cat and I because when that alarm goes off I run around in a panic flapping a tea towel around the fire alarm to waft away the steam, hoping that I don’t set off the fire alarm in the whole building.

  I think we are a team here at Sunnyside too. We recently had a group come in from a church in the community. This group always sound great and we love having them lead our worship. But this day the song leader was feeling a little frail and apologised for her shakiness. Just before the worship service ended, one of our residents agreed to pray for her. This resident is nearly blind, and very hard of hearing and is 100 years old, in great need of a lot of help herself, but here she was intent on praying for this other dear soul who was in need. The song leader shed tears and said she felt very humbled. She had come to Sunnyside intent on ministering to us, but found herself being ministered to.

  This is true Church. This is the love of Christ amongst fellow believers, wherever we are, looking out for each other in our different needs. Me with my absent mindedness when I put the kettle and then get zoned out on the lap-top,  Sunnyside being ministered to by visiting speakers and visiting musicians, visitors being ministered to in their need by Sunnyside, all of us meeting each other’s needs in Christ. Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34).

  Wherever we are, and whoever we are, we are part of the family of God; the wonderful, colourful, loving and exciting family of God, where a warm hug, a sweet smile, a helping hand and a comforting hot drink and meal are all signs of ministering to each other according to God’s commandment that “we love one another as He loves us.