“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
– Acts 2:42
The mission of the Church could be summed up in the saying: ‘We are just walking each other home.’ And while we are on the way home to heaven, we do the things the early church did as shown in this passage: learning from spiritual leaders , caring for each other, celebrating the Lord’s Supper and/or PotBlessings, and praying for each other. That was the way the early church lived in the days after the Ascension of Jesus, and that is the way His followers – us – still live today. That was not all they did in their lives, after all, Paul was a tent-maker, but the verse shows the characteristics of the believers in Jesus in that day. Their ‘devotion’ or great desire was for the gathering together of fellow followers of the Christ – it was their ‘devotion’. We too, don’t spend all our time at the building we call ‘church’ but also have lives and families and many other daily tasks, yet the coming together with our spiritual family is very important to us.
And the pattern of this verse continues for us today. We come together to worship and learn – the apostle’s teaching – and then take that teaching into our hearts and minds in such a way that it changes, and greatly improves, our daily lives. Scripture was always intended to do this very thing – to bring us closer to God because we are separated from HIm by sin. That sin that separated us from God also separated us from each other – ‘your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’ in Genesis 3 shows that our closest relationship, and all other relationships, are also affected by that original sin. By living as the Church in fellowship with each other, we are reversing the curse of that day. And we ‘fellowship’ in so many ways, including at the communion rail and in the other meals we have together. Plus, we pray for each other, both at church and in personal visits and calls.
We are just walking each other home’ is a beautiful way to think of the fellowship we have with one another by our shared faith in Jesus. We share the walk because we are encouraged by each other’s very presence in our lives. May we continue to be an encouragement to each other every day, and praise God who has brought us together!
