When people are happy in church, we need to have the same attitude. It’s about being thoughtful and considerate. When someone is happy, we need to make the effort to be happy with them, even if we’re not feeling happy ourselves. Think of the barren woman who can’t have babies meeting with the pregnant woman who can. Everything in her may want to say, ‘How dare you rejoice! You don’t know how it feels to be without a baby.’ But in the church family, she rejoices with the one who rejoices.
But it also means mourning with those who are mourning. In church, we need to get better at being willing to weep together. Sometimes, we feel we can’t come to church because we will weep, but church should be the safest place to weep—the best place to weep. We can weep together. We’re not very good at that; we’re much better at hiding it. But your instinct when you see someone in church who is crying should be to go to them, sit with them, and cry with them—or, at the very least, give them a hug.
And how about living in harmony with each other? It’s so easy to get angry with one another, to allow the differences between us to create discord rather than harmony. Remember: just because we’re united doesn’t mean we all need to be the same. The word harmony is important—it refers to difference and yet, at the same time, unity. There needs to be harmony. Each local church should be a little orchestra.
This also means we need to be willing to associate with those who are not as rich as us, not as well-respected, or not as high-ranking in the church or in society. It includes people who are awkward, people who are weird, people who smell a bit, or people who behave badly sometimes.
And then there’s the one we all need to take on board. You may have been so well taught that the knowledge you have is huge, if that’s you, then you face the highest temptation to be conceited—to think we know it all. What a mistake that is.
