Bell Ringing
December 3
Pray: King Jesus- help me today to be such a refletion of your nature that people are drawn to your grace through my life of grace. Amen.
Hear:
I am a younger brother. Of all the things a younger brother knows how to do is to annoy their older siblings better than anyone else. A sure-fire way to make sure your older siblings will get red in the face is to mimic them. To copy them, word for word—move for move. My sisters were and are incredibly patient, but still— a good shout of “MIKE STOP COPYING ME,” was just a few minutes of copying away.
Our passage today deals with a good kind of mimicking. I can forget it sometimes, but the Christian faith is not only a way for us to become the best person we can be and to know God more intimately— it is also about putting us into a community. This community isn’t just there so we can have some good buddies, it’s also so that we have people for us to imitate. These habits and mannerisms are also supposed to be reflections of Jesus.
In our passage, Paul is talking about how the church has done such a great job of imitating followers of Christ that their community has changed. So my question for you today is— who are you imitating? Beyond that, I want to ask—are the people you surround yourself with going to change the world for the better? As we imitate people who follow Jesus, we too imitate Jesus. A single bell isn’t very loud. But as we add bells on top of one another, the chorus grows louder and more people hear the music.
Respond:
You’re a bell in the chorus. What song is it playing?
Meditation:
What song is my chorus singing?