Why Do We Need Each Other
By Christopher L. Scott
Moses Lake, Washington
Late one Sunday evening I heard a loud hissing sound coming from my garage. As I walked into the garage I saw water pouring from the corner of the ceiling onto the garage floor. The hissing sound became louder as I entered the garage so I walked outside and saw that a sprinkler valve had broken loose. Water was shooting straight up out of the valve and was contacting the underside of my roof, which happened to be the same location where an air vent was placed to allow for the attic airflow.
Water was gushing from the sprinkler valve, into my attic, and from the attic into the garage. I frantically tried to turn the water valve off that was on the side of the house, but the water valve didn’t work. So I went to the street water valve and tried to turn it off there. But the valve was rusted and I couldn’t move it. I didn’t know what to do. I was new to the area and had no family that lived nearby.
But I had been meeting people at church each Sunday. A regularly attending church member, Sharon, lived several blocks away from me. She was riding her tricycle down my street when she recognized me from church and saw me frantically trying to stop the water from damaging my home!
She called her husband and asked him to come over and help me. He arrived with the biggest pipe wrench and crowbar I had ever seen. He used his tools and the leverage provided by them to turn off the water at the street.
The lesson I learned is that as a body of believers we can help each other if we meet together. And we are told to participate in community together in Hebrews 10:23–25, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near” (NASB). By meeting together we can “encourage one another and build up one another” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). And that only happens when we see one another in fellowship.
Who knows how much damage would have been done to my house if I hadn’t been attending church each Sunday and getting to know people there. It was because of the few Sundays I had been attending church in our new city that I had met Sharon. And because I had been attending church I was given help when I desperately needed it.
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Christopher L. Scott, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, is a pastor and freelance writer. Christopher L. Scott writes from Exeter, CA. Learn more about his writing ministry at ChristopherLynnScott.com.
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