Ruffling Feathers or Inflicting Pain?

Thursday, 28th June 2007

When I sent out the email about "what family means" to my previous cell at the end of last year, it created quite a stir amongst some members. I thank God for the support of one particular brother, who actually told me that it was long overdue, and it was high time that members got shaken out of their comfort zone.

Let's look again at Heb 10:24, where the author tells us to consider how we can spur one another on towards love and good deeds.
The original Greek is the word paroxysmos (G3948), which means to incite or to irritate.

The English word, paroxysm, which means a sudden attack of pain, is derived from this word.

This word is translated as follows
NIV - spur on
NASB - stimulate
AMP - stir up, incite
KJV - provoke

When we look at the above words, what comes to mind? A picture of someone relaxing by the beach on a hammock with a pina colada in hand?

We should picture instead a horse being pricked on its sides by its rider, in order to spur it on.

By the way, that's exactly what a spur is -- a device with sharp edges worn on the rider's boots that is driven into the horse to make it go faster.

So if one feels like a duck getting its feathers ruffled, then that's too mild already :-)

Personally though, I won't go to the extent of inflicting pain on others. Ruffling feathers is probably the furthest I would venture.

A fellow brother shared about his recent trip to India, where he had to constantly fan off dozens of flies that wanted to share his food. Irritating? Now that's also a picture of paroxysmos.

So fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. If you receive SMSes or emails from me rallying everyone to visit this person, or to attend that event, and you find them to be even mildly irritating, then very well and good. They are meant to be so :-)

Having just blogged about faith in action on Monday morning, I received news that same evening that a fellow leader's mom had to be hospitalised.

It was an opportunity for us to put our faith in action, so I was very glad to hear from this leader this morning that practically everyone in the leadership of 3L has taken the effort to visit her mom and to rally around her. Praise be to God!

For those who have yet to visit her, this is being addressed specifically to you. Feeling irritated, like I'm a fly buzzing around your food? Good! :-)