partnership

What makes a person take a 3 hour train journey followed by a 3 mile taxi trip (and with it all to do in reverse again later on) to see a guy like me?

I think the answer is bound up with the pyschological needs a person has when they feel alone and somewhat isolated.

The person who saw me today certainly feels like that. Distressed and deeply concerned by all that's been going in within big church: and feeling so hugely alone.

A phone call might have sufficed, you'd have thought. The person was simply asking the question - what can I do? And you can ask those sorts of questions over the phone.

But the biggest need this person plainly had was for someone in person right there. A tangible, visible proof that she wasn't alone.

The fact that she came that distance, and was ready to fork out the sums of money involved, is indicative of just how deeply troubled many folk are: and just how much they need some visible sense of their not being at all alone.

It's something the Bible goes on about quite a bit - the 'partnership in the gospel' which we share.

My Dad was a partner in the firm where he worked. I suppose, basically, they stood or fell together. They were in it together. That was for sure.

And that's what this notion of partnership really entails. We're in it together. We stand or we fall together. We're not alone.

And that's what this woman really needed to know. That's why she needed to see someone else who she knew would be standing with her.

"It's a psychological as well as a spiritual need", she said. "I need to be able to feel and to see with my own two eyes that I'm not alone."

There are loads like her. Up and down the land. They love the Lord and delight in his Word and they long that his kingdom should come.

And they need to know that they're in this together with others. They're not alone.

It's one of the things we're working on these days. Creating that sense of the underlying partnership in the gospel that we share with one another.

People that we've never met before. People that we wouldn't know from Adam. Or Eve, in her case.

But people who are brothers, sisters, partners in the service of the Lord.

It's a wonderful reality.

And it needs to be given expression in these days.