It’s a warm, humid morning in St Louis. I’ve grabbed a bite of breakfast and a juice in a local café, attached to a nearby hotel, right across the road from the convention centre, where the GC Session is taking place. Unfortunately, it’s a well-known chain (which I won’t name here) and the breakfast options are limited. It’s early Friday morning; the Session has barely begun but already there was some controversy on the floor Thursday afternoon.
I’m sure you’ve been to a café at that time. I like to observe the people rushing in and out, mostly in a hurry, grabbing and going, with barely time to say hi.
A young girl, about two-years-old, comes up to me, all smiles. I assume she wants a bite of my breakfast, and her mum apologises. I tell her it’s fine. I’ve got a two-year old at home. I know what they’re like. The girl stays by my side until her mum gives the snack bag a shake. The little girl knows that this is now her best opportunity for a snack and follows her mum with her arms outstretched.
From the street entrance comes a young couple, who seem to be in the company of a man with no shirt. As he walks in, he takes some kind of light jacket and wraps it around his torso, leaving the front zipper open. While the man looks dishevelled, hair dreadlocked and clothes ill-fitting, the young couple are well dressed, clean cut and fresh faced. They interact with the man, and I figure out they are buying him a meal and a drink. They pay and leave, while he waits to collect his food. He leaves shortly after, prize in hand.
Now I have no way of knowing if that couple were Adventist, but in that part of St Louis, at that time, it’s not a stretch to believe they were. And they seemed to leave the café and cross in the direction of the convention centre.
But let’s say, for the sake of my article that they were. Like the priest and the Levite, they were on their way to fulfil important religious purposes. But like the Samaritan they’ve stopped to help their neighbour.
The brief interaction gave me an important lesson. While it’s easy to get caught up in the politics of the Church at a time like the GC Session, this young couple saw an opportunity to do good. They saw a way they could bless their neighbour. Not to convert but to feed the hungry.
We need to remember to make the main thing, the main thing!
We love to see who will be elected. Delegates and visitors flood the exhibition halls and try to grab the free stuff, the marketing gimmicks and the fun activities. We enjoy the music, speculate on elections and feel proud of our worldwide diversity and mission efforts. But right in front of us, on every corner, there are needs.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to be like Jesus.
Now let me give a disclaimer. I don’t love the people who use this argument of focusing on the mission to shut down conversation. It is healthy for us as a people to discuss and wrestle with what we believe, to care about theology, strategy and structure. We need the frameworks to facilitate mission.
But I’ve been in the Church long enough to know that it is easy to make a program our focus, to talk and debate for endless hours without any activity.
The faith of Jesus is to be lived out. Those who have the blood of Jesus and the testimony need to have fresh and recently lived testimonies. We should be asking every day, who we can serve, restore and even feed. To be a Seventh-day Adventist means we are waiting in eager anticipation for Jesus to come back. But when He gets here, will He find a flock who fed, watered, clothed and visited Him, or a herd of goats?
I’m talking to myself as well. Let’s ask Jesus to help us find an opportunity to serve Him today.
