Pause for Thought

Nathan Cracknell, ReBorne Church

Perhaps your home is like ours? Dotted with pictures of special occasions and holidays. In a time of restricted travel, it seems hard to remember the days when we could easily visit foreign shores and enjoy the sights, cultures and experiences of such visits, without worrying about green lists and isolation periods. For now, most of us will have to content ourselves with the pictures from previous trips.

One such group of pictures was taken from the shore of a large lake near the city of Shkodra in northern Albania. It shows a majestic sunset over a serene lake, with mountains rising steeply from the far shoreline. In the pebbled foreground is a group with some of my family and friends, we are all smiling broadly. They are beautiful photographs. They are wonderful memories.

If you saw these pictures, I’m sure you would agree that they are nice. But would they make you wax lyrical? I doubt it. Even though the photographs are reasonable, they don’t really do that evening justice. The camera fails to capture the almost magical atmosphere that was strangely tangible. It doesn’t convey how the sunset lingered for what seemed like an age before finally fading into the night sky. Nor can it really replicate the love and happiness felt by those in the picture. Separate from the experience of being there, these pictures are limited in their ability to convey what that evening was really like. This is often true in life. If we want to know what something is really like, we have to experience it for ourselves.

In the Bible, we see that people thought this way about Jesus. They heard stories about him, and they wanted to see him for themselves. As a result, large crowds often gathered wherever he went. We are also told of people like Zacchaeus, who wanted to see Jesus for himself, but did not feel able to join the crowds surrounding him. So he decided that he would climb a tree and watch as Jesus passed by. He wanted to experience Jesus but from a safe distance.

Recently, I heard a church leader at an online conference linking this story to a phenomenon that has arisen from the pandemic. Since the first lockdown, the majority of churches now stream content online, providing the opportunity for their congregations to continue to worship together despite restrictions. It has also provided a new opportunity for those who, like Zacchaeus, want to see what Jesus is all about, but from a safe distance. For this reason, many churches are now planning to maintain their online services even after restrictions are fully lifted.

This is good news for those who want to investigate Jesus for themselves, but who may not feel able to attend a church in person – and clicking an online link may be easier than climbing up trees. As it happens, after Zacchaeus climbed that tree, his life was never the same again.

rebornechurch.org