Dear Friends
Jesus drew near and said to them, ‘All power in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go, then, and make disciples of all people, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ [Matthew 28:18-19]
Have you noticed a new phrase that has come into our language in the past couple of weeks? – ‘vampire power’. In these difficult times of rising energy prices, we are being told of all those appliances that leach our electricity even when they are shut off. Televisions, radios, microwaves, computers and tablets are so easy simply to keep plugged in but they keep on drawing down the electricity. Vampire power (or standby power) can account for as much as 20% of our electricity bills. That is a lot of money! I have also read somewhere that the power used to keep televisions and electrical appliances in the UK on standby just for one day would be sufficient to provide electricity to a small town. It is a sobering thought, isn’t it, all that power going to waste, achieving nothing.
Perhaps equally sobering is the thought that we, as individual Christians and together as a Church, might be equally as guilty of wasting a different kind of power – the power of God. Jesus tells us ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.’ I am sure that what Jesus envisaged was that the power of the Holy Spirit would so flow through us that we would make a difference to the world in which we live, changing lives through how we work and witness.
Sadly, as churches we seem to look inwards far too much of the time, concerned with the many committees we need to attend, quotas, deployment, maintaining the fabric of the building, supporting church events. Instead of surging out, God’s power becomes trapped in an internal loop. We go on standby. Just as, in our homes, we are looking at how to use the energy we need more efficiently, perhaps we should be looking at the energy we expend in church. If the power stored in our appliances could meet the needs of a town, so the power at our disposal could meet the needs of our community, if not the entire world, if only we had the will and the courage to release it!
God bless,
Yvonne