Holding on to One Another

Sunday's message ended with an assignment, and assignments have a way of evaporating by Tuesday. So here it is again.

Hebrews 10:24 says, "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works." That verb means to fix your eyes on something and study it until you have understood it. In the Greek, the thing you are told to study is a person.

Write down a name. Today, before this gets away from you. A name, not a category. If nobody comes to mind, that is worth knowing about yourself, and the answer is to look harder this Sunday rather than to wait for a name to arrive on its own.

Do one specific thing for them this week. Small and real beats large and imagined. A text on Tuesday. A phone call you do not rush. Twenty minutes in a parking lot. A second question after they tell you they are fine.

Go after somebody who is gone. Verse 25 names people who had stopped showing up, and it describes them without any contempt at all. Think of one person you have not seen in a while and reach out without asking them to explain themselves. Tell them the room is not complete without them. That is the whole message.

Let somebody do this to you. Most of us skip this one. Tell a person you trust the true thing about where you actually are right now, the version you would normally edit down to fine before it reaches anybody. We cannot say out loud that nobody holds on alone and then quietly decide we are the exception.

Read the passage again Saturday night. Hebrews 10:19-25 is seven verses. Read the two "since" clauses slowly, the ones about the blood of Jesus and the great priest over the house of God. Every command in this passage is standing on top of something He already finished, which is why none of this is a performance review.

Pick somebody this week.