Five Minute Friday: Gather

This week’s Five Minute Friday prompt is on the word gather.

Tonight I attended an annual dinner for the Vitae Foundation here in my hometown. Vitae is an organization that works to shed light into the lives of pregnant women everywhere who feel that abortion is their only alternative. Scared, confused and feeling as though they have no other options, Vitae reaches out through various forms of media to point them toward life. They establish themselves into the hearts of these women – often young girls who have barely scraped the surface of womanhood – and form a relationship that lasts, on average, 2 years. This gives Vitae time to know the woman, know the child they’re helping to save and to teach them about Christ and His love for them and their unborn.

You might wonder what this has to do with the word “gather.” But it makes me think of how God’s work can be done when two or more gather together in His name. Our voices are louder. Our hands are stronger. Our love reaches a broader spectrum.

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Gather

Start:

When a small drop of water hits a larger body of water it really doesn’t do a lot of damage to the surface. But it sends out ripples. Ripples that carry themselves across that surface with speed and grace. One ripple might never reach the shoreline, but many ripples falling together stir the water and carry it further and further.

As such, is the body of Christ.

When we gather together in His name, whether it be through prayer, or perhaps to bring together many hands, we bring forth a power so much bigger than ourselves or anything we could accomplish alone.

When our Creator made us, he didn’t make us to be alone. At least…not for long periods of time.

He made us to stir one another along. To sharpen one another. To be his company of workers.

To gather.

We are greater in number whether it be through petitioning Him with our voices, unveiling His face through the work of our hands or lifting each other up both physically and emotionally.

A single piece of kindling grabs a spark and quickly goes up in flame as it vanishes forever. But when we gather many pieces together it becomes the heat which ignites the rest of the fire. The force behind what sends such quick and powerful heat to the wood that doesn’t burn quite so easily. The fire would never exist without the kindling behind it.

When we gather in the name of Jesus we are ripples that multiply. We are kindling that ignites. It is we who gather as a body and grow into the hands and feet that we are tasked to do.

We are the body of Christ. When we gather…

Stop

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