Lent #18:  Virtual Church Week Two.

They were all scattered.

(Acts 8:1)

Virtual church again. Through modern technology, we pretend to gather. We know it's not the real thing. We long for that gathering when we become, what our pastor calls, “analog church” once again. It makes us even more aware that we are scattered: “The hour is coming,” as our Lord said to his disciples, “when you will be scattered, each one to his own home.” We know ourselves as scattered because we know what it means to be gathered—gathered together in Jesus Name, i.e. “church.”  Only the gathered know that they are scattered; and, only the scattered know what a blessing it is to be gathered.

Maybe that is our Lenten Suffering: “On that day a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the region” (Ac 8). This scattering resulted in big surprises: “Those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to a city of Samaria, and proclaimed to them the Christ—the Anointed One” (vss 4&5). Others “who were scattered because of the persecution …traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the Word” (Ac 11).  Philip and other no-named “others” find themselves scattered about. The surprise is that this scattering ends up bringing the gospel to the whole wide world—even to us.

Let’s trust that our scattering will result in some surprise good. God has a way of bending things into something good (Romans 8 somewhere).