Imagine for
a moment you were transported back into time, to the time of the early church.
To a time when being a follower of Jesus was not popular. Imagine for a moment
you were in that time, that sliver of history that capsule in time.
Jesus had been crucified a couple of months back probably a couple of years. You heard about the faith of the Christ followers and you accepted but the memory of that whole momentous time in the history of the Israelites was fading and it was all the apostles could do to keep the faith burning.
Remember also that all the main tenant of our
modern faith were not in existence. Christian, the term, was not invented. Church
was not the building and praise and worship were just a few haunting Jewish
traditional beats.
You could not confess your faith openly despite
the fire in your bones. To meet other Christians you had to sneak out of your
house in the dead of the night and even those moments were once in a while and
far in between. You memorised scripture not because it was a ‘cool’ thing to do
but the word was so scarce that the only way to have it for your own was to
memorise.
You could have gotten yourself a copy but that
would be too expensive, take too long to copy and even then was more a beacon
to get you scorched by the fires of persecution.
Imagine for a moment a world without the modern
day spiritual amenities? No praise and worship. No church service or church to
pledge loyalty. No bibles and no weekday devotional. No Christian books or
Christian music or Christian clubs, movies or any other stuff tailored to
Christian proclivities.
Imagine, identifying another Christian you had
to use secret or coded messages just so you could live to see another day. That
the local zoo was also the local coliseum, a place of entertainment for some
but a place of death for others..
Stripped of all our modern day stuff what would
our faith depend on and what would it look like. It makes me wonder about what’s
really important in the walk of faith.
I am not sure I know but one thing I have
learned is that, if you want to know how it works out, read the stories of
those that have gone before and from their victories draw a battle plan.
We can only stumble in the future if we have
not looked to the past. We cannot truly move forward until we have understood
the past…I think.
