Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5:11
Okay, friends. It is Sunday morning and I usually share some kind of a “I will see you in church” encouragement post. I think y’all understand by now how important worship is to me – especially in the context of the local faith community.
Instead I am going to write a little about Friday morning’s expedition with the Tarboro Cycling biker gang I have been riding with. It wasn’t our usual smooth-sailing trek and things did not go as planned. Yet the ride was instructive and helpful in many ways.
First, as referenced in yesterday’s post, there was the heat. We started early enough to beat the worst of it, meeting up at 7:45 and rolling by 7:50. Theoretically, 30 miles at an average of 14 mph should have taken just a little more than two hours plus the fifteen-minute stop at the Duck-Thru in Pinetops.
But of course that didn’t happen. First, the heat rolled in quickly and left us all pulling at less than 75%. Then there was the unscheduled stop for Mike’s flat tire. The guys organized a temporary fix that promptly failed and it was flat as a pancake again by the end of our break at the Duck-Thru.
Then a series of challenges with the inner-tube change-out added an extra fifteen minutes. So by the time we left Pinetops the temperatures had become hot enough that we scaled back our pedaling and didn’t make it back to Tarboro until well after 11:00.
Finally, one of the guys ran into a mishap on his way home that effectively put both his bike and himself out of commission. We are all thankful he was not riding alone.
“Build Each Other Up”
So what has all this got to do with a Sunday morning blog post? Everything, I believe, because – as I wrote in “The Unmaking of a Part-Time Christian” – this following Jesus business is best understood, best explained, and certainly best experienced as a team sport.
The opening black-and-white photograph was titled “Band of Brothers” by the photographer who captured the image (my friend Brookes). It is an important observation mainly because it is so true.
This faith thing is a journey we are taking together, and it is certainly not something I could even begin to engage with much success on my own. Christianity is not a philosophy that can be “tried on for size” or a “lifestyle choice” to explore – it is an intentional commitment to discipleship. And being a disciple necessarily involves relationships with others who are taking the same journey.
When we hit the heat we changed our cadence as a group. When somebody needed a water break we all stopped. Then the tire was removed and the inner tube replaced by a team of concerned participants who were not about to ride away and say “See you, Mike; good luck getting home!”
We are in this together, not in lockstep but in lock-heart. All headed the same way. And we trade in the currency of encouragement.
“Therefore,” Paul writes in the earliest New Testament document we have, “encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.”
Just do it – DEREK
We are in this together, not in lockstep but in lock-heart. All headed the same way. And we trade in the currency of encouragement.