“I can’t bother him again!’ The words of my 81-year-old friend who lives just around the corner. ‘He’s got a family and it’s time for him to get into the Sunday zoom meeting too! It’s my stupid fingers – they won’t work!’
It was the beginning of April, a few weeks into the Coronavirus lockdown, and a tech team of skilled volunteers had worked hard to re-purpose computers to enable our older members to connect into Sunday meetings online. They’d found un-used tablets in cupboards, revived old laptops, uploaded zoom, delivered around the neighbourhood – all while trying to adjust to doing their full-time day jobs online.
They were tired to say the least! Yet that Sunday morning, when my friend phoned me to say she couldn’t ‘make the tablet come alive’ I knew just the person to call. A member of our tech team lived just up the road – ‘I know how hard you’ve worked’ I said, ‘and I know it’s probably just a simple thing that needs to happen, but she can’t get online…’
‘Leave it with me’, he said. Minutes later he called me back – ‘All fixed! The buttons on the tablet are tiny, they must be really hard for her. It’s not a problem, I’ll don my mask and pop down every Sunday. We can’t have her missing out!’
And those words just expressed God’s heart to me – the heart that says ‘you matter’. The heart of love that expresses itself to others once we’ve touched the heart of Him – the one who gave it all for us.
Of course my friend could bother him again, and my tech team friend could have said ‘I’ve done all I can, I’m not sure what else I can do; it’s not really my problem – we’ve already provided a tablet, uploaded zoom, delivered it to her…’ But that wouldn’t have been God’s heart. So it wasn’t his heart – or ours – either.
People matter you see.
Elspeth Paisley
