The church can be a place to connect.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another,
God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
1 John 4:11 New International Version

A lot happens in the marketplace. It is a place of selling and buying. It is a place of gathering. Day in and day out people gather to do business in the marketplace, yet it’s more than a place of commerce. It is a place for connecting with others.

Lepaterique, Honduras

On this Saturday evening in Lepaterique there were people gathering throughout the community and walking the dusty roads from one shop to another. There were probably more conversations happening than buying or selling. Connecting with others is an important aspect of life.

So, why do we find it difficult to connect with each other in the worship? We enter through the front door, sit in our pew and find our way back to the parking lot with the possibility of never saying hello to another person.

Yet, our purpose of being in worship is so that God can connect with us, and maybe, just maybe, we might connect with another pilgrim in life.

I believe that even though we struggle to connect with others in worship, we look for connections when we enter God’s house. We want to connect with God and we want to connect with other people. In one sense, we’d like the church to become a marketplace, not for the selling of goods, but to connect with others.

We’d like the church to be a place where we truly connect with others who loves us. The next time we worship, maybe we could say “hello” to someone before we head to the car and start a connection with that person.

Copyright Douglas P Brauner