Daily Manna · Day 230 · August 18
In the Midst
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
How do you know whether God turned up at your meeting?
Maybe you set out twelve chairs and four people came. Then you spent the drive home adding up whether the group is worth keeping alive. Nobody says it out loud, but attendance has quietly become the way you measure whether God was there.
So look at where Jesus says this, because the setting explains it. The promise comes at the end of a passage about two believers dealing with a wrong between them. Jesus says, "go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone," and "if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established." The two or three in verse 20 are the two or three from verse 16. That is the hardest kind of gathering in the life of any church. It is the smallest and the least impressive, and it is the one Jesus promises to stand in the middle of.
The number was never the point, then, and neither is a crowd. The condition is His name. A room gathered for its own reasons has no promise here at all, but three people who came because He is Lord have Him standing among them.
Lord, I have been counting chairs. Forgive me for using a number to decide whether You were in the room. You promised to be present with two or three who gather in Your name, so that is what I am asking for. Be in the middle of the small and awkward group I belong to, and in the conversation in it that nobody wants to have. Thank You that You keep Your word to small rooms. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 230 is Whom They Have Pierced (Zechariah 12:10).