Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during October 2022]

In a recent sermon the preacher suggested that a household with one car was more likely to be close-knit than one where more cars were available. His argument was that, with only one car the family would have to plan together for the use of the car and that those discussions would extend to other aspects of their domestic arrangements. With other cars available, the family members were more likely to go their own way without the need for consulting one another.

Does the same principle apply to the television? Do you dislike one person’s choice of programme so much that you retreat to another room and another TV? What about their preference for music of a certain genre or volume? Or their taste in smelly cooking? Households of a previous generation did not have so many opportunities for escaping each other – are we happier with our ‘multiple-choice’ lifestyles?

Do these domestic deliberations also apply to our church lives? If we do not like the music do we tune out? If we do not like the preaching do we ignore the messages that it contains? Are we tempted to think that the pews are more comfortable elsewhere?

Affluence makes the heart grow fonder – but often that increased fondness is for more possessions and richer experiences. A surplus of income over expenditure may indeed be regarded as a blessing but it carries risks. We do not have to look very far to see people whose lives have been damaged by wealth that they handled unwisely.

Jesus said that it is difficult for a rich person to get into heaven. It is not that Jesus thought of riches as intrinsically evil – many of the old testament patriarchs were very wealthy – but rather that an abundance of riches tends to distract from more important things.

Recently, we have heard about the work of Compassion and the Horley Food Bank, and members of HBC both individually and collectively have responded well. This is accordance with what we read in the New Testament letter from James:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1 v27

We know that, in due course, our generosity will be rewarded in heaven^[1] but there is also a warning for those who hold their earthly possessions too tightly or are miserly with their time. In the meantime a word of thanks from those we help can be very encouraging.

We each have, in our households, things that we think of as ‘mine’ and other things that we regard as ‘ours’; are there also things that could be ‘yours’ – things that might be of greater benefit to someone else? Maybe sharing them is something that we could talk about.

[1] Matthew 25 v34-40

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