Our church has a mid-week worship service we call Tuesday Noon Church. It is a great opportunity to spend time with friends new and old, enjoy a delicious home-cooked meal and hear a brief message from God’s Word. I usually preach at this service and I have discovered that I can say in ten minutes what it used to take me twenty minutes to say.
This week I was enjoying my meal and chatting with the folks seated beside me when a fork speared a sausage from my plate of jambalaya. The surprising thing was that the fork came from a friend seated on the other side of the table. His “extended reach” fork episode made everyone at the table laugh. It also reminded me of a story.
A man dreamed that he died and went to hell. The first thing he noticed was that everyone there had a board strapped to their arm, making it impossible to bend their arms. At the end of the board was a fork. Although there was an abundance of food on the table in front of them, the people were starving because they were not able to feed themselves.
In his dream, the man was then transported to heaven. The folks there had the same board and fork attached to their arms. The tables in front of them were similarly loaded with food. In heaven, however, everyone was happy and content. The residents of heaven had learned how to feed each other.
The story did not come from the Bible but it certainly has a Biblical ring to it. Years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah wrote, “If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness…You will be like a well-watered garden.” (Isaiah 58:10-11)
Heaven is not only a place where the followers of Jesus go when they die. It is also the place where we live. “The kingdom of God is within you (in your hearts) and among you (surrounding you).” (Luke 17:21 AMPC) When we show compassion for those who are hungry, lonely, homeless and broken, God is present. The Kingdom is here. Everyone is fed.
-Dr. Jim Baldwin
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