March 9 – God Gathers
During Lent, our weekly e-devotion will be taken from the “God Acts” devotional booklet. Please follow along in the booklet for a new devotion each day.
1 Corinthians 1:2-3
To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lordand ours:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Communion of Saints is an oft-overlooked part of the Christian creeds. We affirm that it is created by the Holy Spirit, but say little more about what is meant by the phrase. It is a short phrase that has vast implications. Among other things, it means that the Holy Spirit is at work connecting us to Christ and the whole Christian church. This means that in our gathering for worship, we are gathered with a whole cloud of Christians across time and space in Christ’s name. This may actually be easier to understand now as we have been experiencing streaming worship. While there is a physical gathering for worship happening, the worship overflows that physical location. It connects people in their living rooms or wherever their devices take them. The Christian community becomes a cloud on the virtual cloud. From there we it is not too hard to begin to image that our worship also connects us with Christian communities of worship around the world, from Sudan to Japan to Argentina, and everywhere in between. It also extends in time. Just as not everyone watches our virtual worship at the same time, so too Christian worship extends out into the future and back into the past. Yet because Christ is the center of it all, we find connection with all of those saints of all of those times and places.
Is there not a soul among you who sometimes hear the Spirit of the Son crying in his inmost heart, “Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6)? Let him who feels himself loved by the Father realize that he is moved by the same Spirit as the Son. Trust without reserve. Be of good courage. Know yourself to be the Father’s daughter in the Spirit of the Son. Know yourself to be the Bride, or sister of the Son, for you will find both these names given to her who loves the Son. –Bernard of Clairvaux