Being Jesus

It's Wednesday morning. I'm at the Corner Bakery with a room full of people in community. This is the new community for our culture, a place where we can gather, drink coffee and fellowship. People need this! With the electronic age so dominant people don't have a place to connect. A coffee shop or restaurant like this offers such a place. A place to visit. The buzz around me is loud, people connecting. We so need that. We need someone to talk to, someone to listen to us. We need people and a little food on the table is always a good thing.

It's what Jesus did. Eat, visit, fellowship, focus on others. I would have loved to sit at a meal with Jesus. I'm sure it wouldn't have been a meal focused on him. I'm sure he was one of the best listeners ever! I can see him in my imagination even as I write this, intently listening as his dinner companion would ramble on about life, problems, people, fears and struggles. I can see his laser focus on the other person's words and thoughts. You would have thought, if Jesus were listening to you, that you were the only person in the world at that moment! Food, fellowship and a visit with Jesus, there is no counselor on earth that could accomplish what a meal with Jesus would do.

We are designed for community, for fellowship, for others. We are designed to be connected to others. That's how God made us. Our culture today is doing everything it can to get away from this, but we are never satisfied with this isolation, we need others! We need community. I watch as young people around me are busy texting someone who isn't there even while sitting in the presence of a real person. I watch as a couple out for dinner together are both on cell phones talking to someone else instead of talking to one another. Amazingly we are isolating ourselves in the midst of community, we are alone in a crowd. It's not the way we were designed, it's not healthy for us.

If Jesus sat down to a meal with you he would gently take your phone, turn it off with a smile and then focus all his attention on you. He does that even now. He listens, cares and is focused on us because he designed us to be in community, to be connected…..and connected to flesh and blood, not to electronics. I'm sure he would set aside everything to focus on me, and he does. It's something we desperately need and until he returns he has given us the task of being Jesus to those around us.