Sometime back I was a local garage sale. I’m always looking for something unusual, and I saw three great big letters sitting in a pile on the table. Looking closer, the letters were H, E, and M, which I couldn't believe as that's' the initials of my three daughters. I picked them up, without a plan of what to do with them. Or rather my plan was to give them to my wife to do something with. She loves when I buy junk at garage sales to give to her.
When I get to the front to check out, the woman asks me about the letters and says “did you get the clock?” I was confused as I didn’t need a clock, which she told me was broken anyways. Why is she trying to sell me a broken clock? She told me “it goes with the set of letters.” And after I stood there staring blankly at her she finally said “because it spells home.”
And then it all made sense. Something was missing and I didn’t even know it. I could have made something else out of those letters, but it couldn’t be what it was designed to be without that O.
In the same way, we can’t be what God has designed us to be without being a part of a local church. The church is meant to be right in the middle of our lives, drawing us closer to God and to each other. But we often don’t know what we are missing. Of course things like sickness, illness, travel, or other things come up from time to time. But as much as we are able, we need to be a part of the local church every week. This is how God designed our hearts and minds to work, and without it we are incomplete. We might create something else out of our life like I planned to with those letters, but we can never be what God made us to be without the local church.
This Christmas season, in the middle of the tyranny of the urgent, make the choice to be in church and be complete. Make the choice to be what God has created us to be through your regular attendance and investment in the local church.