There’s a little girl called Selah in the church we attend who just brings life. She scurries around, gives people big smiles and always has the pastor’s three-year old son running after her (perhaps a sign of things to come). She was sick this week and it just wasn’t quite the same.

But it got me thinking. What is it that we add to the mix? What is missing when we’re not there?

Few things cause us more grief in interpreting the Bible than ignoring the context.

It’s true that some statements are pretty clear no matter what the context is. One of those is found in Philippians chapter 4: whatever is true, honourable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things. Paul is not talking about moral ideals. The Greek philosophers believed that the good, the true and the excellent all existed independently of God. The role of their god or gods was to try to implement these in the world. But for the Bible, all these phrases are simply a character description of God himself, and hence of Jesus.

A long time ago, the wisest man in the world at the time told a story of people living in a cave. The light shone from behind them and cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The people mistook the shadows for the reality. Because they were in chains, they were unable to look behind them and see the true light for what it was.

The passage at the end of Acts 2 says a lot of what we need to know about how God designed church. Luke tells us there were four things happening: teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers.

Then he adds to this that they were in the habit of being together and sharing their possessions as any had need, eating and breaking bread together in their homes.

This year we have all learned a lot about waiting. But the real question is this: what have we learned while waiting?

The journey is as important as the goal. Our whole culture is built around the idea of achieving the most desirable goals in the shortest possible period of time and with the least possible effort.