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?
Twelve chairs out, four people in them, and the drive home spent doing arithmetic on whether this is worth keeping alive. Nobody says it, but attendance has quietly become the instrument you use to measure the presence of God.
So look at where Jesus says it, because the setting does all the work. This is not a sentence about meetings in general. It comes at the end of a passage on two believers dealing with a wrong between them: go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone, and if he will not hear, take with thee one or two more. The two or three in verse twenty are the two or three from verse sixteen. That is the hardest, least attended and least impressive gathering in the life of any church, and it is the one Jesus promises to stand in the middle of.
So the number was never the point, and neither is a crowd. The condition is the name. A room assembled for its own reasons has no promise here at all, and 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 your presence to two or three who came in your name, so that is what I am asking for, and not for a crowd. Be in the midst of the small and awkward gathering I belong to, including the conversation in it that nobody wants to have. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 230 is Whom They Have Pierced (Zechariah 12:10).