Sweet Fellowship | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Sweet Fellowship | Previous Challenge Entry
By Stanley McMahon
03/18/15
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES

The picture hung unobtrusively beside the door to the kitchen. Those who passed it frequently had long forgotten it was there. The important thing about it was not the image itself but the caption beneath. It was a quote from a Bible verse, complete with reference. ‘We enjoyed sweet fellowship’, it announced, informing the reader that the quote came from Psalm 55:14.

On this occasion I was the new observer of the text and, noticing the reference, I looked it up later. To my dismay the verse had been misquoted and was missing the word, ‘once’. The verse should have read ‘We once enjoyed sweet fellowship.’ The context is one of the psalmist crying out to God about a situation where he is lamenting the betrayal of a friend by whom he is now being subjected to all kinds of malicious attacks.

He longs for the days when he had once enjoyed sweet fellowship. Broken trust and betrayed confidences are a blight on any relationship and one of the hardest things to endure. They were dark days for the psalmist and yet in the midst of the turmoil and the pouring out of his heart he penned the immortal words of comfort: ‘Cast your cares upon the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.’ (Psalm 55:22)

I later discovered that the original quote was accurate in the context. There had indeed been division and heartache between the brothers in that place. Over the years, my experience within the church has been such that I have been able to identify well with the writer of this psalm when he says, ‘Oh that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away…’ I have wanted to be anywhere else but there. But therein lies the beauty of God. He places us in situations where the only solution is to call out to Him and realise that that by casting our cares upon Him, we will survive, even the betrayal of a friend. We will learn to love with that everlasting love that the Father pours into our hearts when we open up to Him. We learn that our vulnerability in crying out to the Lord becomes our fortress. Forgiveness becomes our friend and we see that He becomes our strength in our weakness.

Nevertheless, it remains equally true that we ought to be ever striving to create a church culture in which the Father’s love is deeply felt and shared; where human ambition is frowned upon and abandoned in favour of seeking first the kingdom of God.

A songwriter, local to my own neck of the woods, once wrote a song that proclaimed, ‘We don’t need religion, but we could use the love of God’. Perhaps more than anything today we could do with rediscovering the power and simplicity of the love of God in our hearts and lives. We like the warmth of love and the idea of love but when it comes to practicing love it cuts across our selfishness and calls us out of our comfort zones to confront the ugliness of our own sin and the darkness of our attitudes and prejudices. God help us to abandon the safety of our own strengths and swim out into the sea of faith, trusting you as our guiding light, our true Father and our God of love.

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY
SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.

Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.