“We won’t need you anymore…”
She wasn’t surprised…
Not after all that had happened since she arrived…
She first walked into the room a few hours earlier….
It was large and mostly empty.
The lights were off…
Filling the room with a grey murk cut by strips of sun from the tall windows…
Patterning the wood floor…
Leaving shafts of dust-filled light in the air.
She looked around the dark room.
Was anyone here?
Then she saw them.
Three women sitting on chairs in a dark corner…
Drinking coffee and talking like friends who have known each other for a long time.
They barely looked up as she approached…
She stopped just three feet from their tight little circle.
Their conversation continued.
She shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot…
Finally she said, “Hello!”
Conversation stopped.
Three pairs of eyes turned toward her…
One woman sighed.
“Hello dear,” she said.
“We told them we didn’t need you.”
“The three of us and Elizabeth have been hosting receptions for decades.”
“Even with Elizabeth on vacation, we don’t need new people to help us.”
They explained the sequence of events…
Custodians would set up the tables and chairs…
Caterer would drop off the food…
The three of them…
The four of them…
Would decorate the tables…
Serve coffee…
Watch the buffet lines…
“You do know how to make coffee?” one woman asked.
“Perhaps you can busy yourself in the kitchen making coffee.”
And so it was no surprise when at the end of the reception…
The three women lined up in front of her…
And one of them said, “Thank you, dear. But we won’t be needing you again.”
Where do you think this little saga played-out?
In a room ironically named “Fellowship Hall”…
Yes, it was in a church…
Where three volunteers may have forgotten The Bible’s commandments about how believers should treat each other…
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up… 1 Thessalonians 5:11
May have forgotten that when we encourage one another, we can…
…stir up one another to love and good works, Hebrews 10:24
How often are we all like those three women?
How often do we forget that Jesus said…
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. John 13:34
Forget that the world watches how we treat each other…
As we quarrel over beliefs…
Dispute over doctrines…
Display anything but love for one another …
Forgetting that Jesus didn’t say his disciples would be known by their fancy words…
Or complicated system of beliefs…
But by the simple act of love for one another …
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another .” John 13:35
