meeting together

An important part of surviving in the jungle of our secular world is our meeting together.

"Let us not give up meeting together ..."

It can be tempting, for all sorts of reasons, to skip the meeting together. We're busy people, after all. Time is at a premium.

But this meeting together is part of the basic survival package which the Lord gives to us. Because hand in hand with the call to meet together is the urgent exhortation to encourage one another. The two belong together.

There's the Sunday meeting together. That's why and how the 'day of rest' was first defined. Not just downing tools and quitting the work side of things for a day: but actively meeting together.

"A day of sacred assembly," as the good book puts it.

We meet for together every single Sunday. It's meant to be a priority (not all can make it each week, of course, for different reasons: and some can't make it at all - but that doesn't alter at all the fact that it's to be a high priority).

Our survival, remember, depends, at least in part, on this meeting together - and the encouragement that brings. Which is why we try and make it very clear that the time over coffee and tea at the end is just as integral a part of it all as the slightly more formal 'act of worship' itself.

The chance to engage with each other - to meet together, rather than simply sitting beside each other.

I was up in Aberdeenshire last night, for an evening service there. Howe Trinity Parish Church host an annual Songs of Praise, which draws in folk from neighbouring congregations. An expanded version of this meeting together.

And a time of real encouragement. There was a good-sized congregation and a vibrant spirit of worship. And the Lord himself was present in our midst.

Today has been much the same. Meeting together with different folk.

Meeting with people this morning. With the set intent of affording each other encouragement. They need it. I need it. It doesn't come any other way than by meeting like this together. It's how we survive. As important as that.

Through to Glasgow this afternoon, to meet with others who've gathered from all over the country. We don't really meet to decide that much. But as one of the men there says - it's the meeting together which helps. There's encouragement in that.

Tonight there's our regular monthly time of prayer (well, it's not as regular as it might be, I guess, since it's not always the same night of the week).

This, too, is our meeting together. And this, too, is for our encouragement.

Clive Parnell is here tonight, sharing something of the work in which he's involved with UCCF.

He reminds us that committed Christians comprise perhaps something like 2% of the student world. He draws some helpful contrasts with the way things are now as compared to maybe 20 or 30 years ago.

More students, less care. More stress, less cash. More mess, less maturity. More ignorance of the Bible, less confidence in the gospel. More plurality, less tolerance.

A whole series of contrasts. It's a very different student world today. It's good to hear of what's going on. Encouraging.

The Scriptures stress this meeting together. Our society today can sometimes make it hard.

Neighbours often don't really know each other at all. The garden fence, over which neighbours of a former generation often talked, has become a high-level hedge or even a wall. A barrier and a boundary, the opposite of any sort of meeting together.

The common green's been replaced by individual lawns. Families barely see each other: there's a TV in everyone's room. Even the pub's been largely superceded by the virtual world technology has somehow engineered.

It's harder now than it used to be. But certainly just as important.

Let us not give up meeting together! Our survival depends on it.