I was glad when they said unto me,
Let us go into the house of the Lord.
Psalm 122:1, KJV.
Not until recently have I fully appreciated these words of David. Having been brought up on a steady diet of church all my life, it was what we did on Sundays. In fact, twice on Sundays, as a child, teen and young adult (until those churches we attended stopped offering evening services).
Growing up, we had to be pretty much at death's door to get out of attending. If I'm honest, some times I did drag my feet about going, but generally I went, and with a willing spirit.
And so it continued ... until Lockdown. Lockdown can be blamed for a lot of things. On the one hand, it opened up opportunities to listen to sermons online. Churches that weren't already offering digital services, very quickly jumped on the bandwagon. Soon the internet was flooded with a variety of church services. Some good, and some not so good.
On the other hand, Lockdown meant no longer physically meeting together with other believers. We knew that the Scriptures admonished us not to stop meeting together, but we also knew we were to obey governments. And so we accepted it, knowing that the reason was to supposedly protect the vulnerable in our communities and slow the spread of COVID, and because we knew it would only be for a time.
But there were other implications. It was easy for some to get out of the habit of attending church regularly ... and they have found it difficult to return. For others, they questioned the purpose of church, or the way it was being conducted, or what was being taught. In some ways, Lockdown was like a breathing space that gave them time to stop, take stock, and make decisions.
For us personally, the happenings of the last two years with Lockdowns and online services and the time they gave us to seriously consider where we were at with regards our church, led to us making the difficult decision to leave. Since then I, particularly, have felt adrift, even though I know that not to be true. I do have an Anchor and during these times when we have agonised over finding a church home and even doubted that we would find one, while all the time having to deal with some issues where a church family would have been deeply appreciated, Christ has never left us.
With restrictions lifted, we have now had the opportunity to attend church. Some days, as last weekend when we visited Son#2 and his family, it has been a church not even in our area. But as we've returned to church again in real life, I've experienced a joy and gladness that I may not have fully expressed in the past.
I've heard it said that we're meant to do Christianity in relationship with others. We are to serve together, worship together, encourage and admonish one another, learn to love and act out our faith in relationship with others. As tempting as it might be to do all this from the comfort of our own living rooms, it doesn't work that way. It's only an imitation of what church is meant to be. Sure it has it's place, particularly for those who genuinely cannot attend a service (due to illness, shift work, distance, or government restrictions for example) but it should not become a replacement for the real thing.
We need to care for each other, carry each other's burdens, learn and grow together under the faithful teaching of those placed over us, discover how to show mercy and grace to that brother or sister who needs it, put aside self and think of others. None of that truly happens when we do church from home. We can learn and grow - but I believe, only for a time. For most of us, we need to be in regular fellowship with other believers, learning to accept them despite their imperfections and weaknesses, having the grace to admit our own faults, confessing our sins to one another, and growing in our walk with the Lord.
Which is why today I could say:
I was glad when they said unto me,
Let us go into the house of the Lord.
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