As I crossed the cricket oval on my daily walk yesterday, a voice called out to me from the distance. I stopped and walked over to the man who also approached me.
As he drew closer, I could see that he walked with a limp, his arms and face were also somewhat twisted out of shape- possibly the man had suffered a stroke or something similar.
He handed me a watch, and in a voice that was made hard to understand by his disability, the man asked me to put it back "to old time." We changed to summer time a few weeks ago, so I asked him if he wanted his watch put back to standard time and he nodded.
I quickly adjusted the watch and we went our separate ways.
I asked the Lord what that was about and He said that many people in the church want to go "back to the old time." They want to go back to the times when churches seemed full, life was simpler and the old traditions made life more understandable.
But the "old time" is gone for ever. The church has to live in "new time" with all the complexities of 21st century life. We have to learn to be the church on mission in today's climate, reaching out to today's people rather than longing for the mythical past.
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