“A stranger passing through the mining district of Pennsylvania on Sunday some years ago, saw a large number of mules in a field at the entrance of one of the mines. He asked a little boy why the field was so full of mules. The small lad replied, “These mules are worked in the darkness of the mines for six days of the week, and they are brought up into the light on Sunday to keep them from going blind.”
Isn’t it true that people are a little like mules? We know some folks who are completely oblivious of the purpose of the Lord’s Day, the day of worship. They are indifferent to the call of the church, they are neglectful of the teachings for which it stands, and they have become morally and spiritually blind.
Just as the mules of the mine need one day in seven to be brought from the darkness of their toils into God’s glorious sunlight, so we need one day in seven whereupon we might rest from the labors of life and be lifted from the trivialities of this world’s darkness into high places of companionship with God and Christ and Christian friends. (Even God worked six days and rested on the seventh.)
It is for this purpose God gave us the day of worship. Wise is the man who accepts God’s gift and foolish is the man who rejects it, for he is taking his stand with those who are spiritually blind. That blindness is the curse of our needful world. Every person ought to feel obligated to his God, his friends, his loved ones, and to himself to observe the Lord’s Day by being in the Lord’s House.” ( I clipped this article from Cocoa Beach Christianaut (newsletter) 43 years ago and it is still very true.)
I know that going to a house of worship does not make you a Christian any more than parking your car in a garage makes you a garage. However, wanting to associate with your family certainly makes you a part of that family. What would the family think if you refused to meet with them, to associate with them, to share with them? There is encouragement and strength received from each other in the gathering of the church. The church is not the building, it is the people who worship together, love each other, in that place.
God’s Word declares, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Hebrews 10:25
Max Speaking 