Everyone A Witness
A Tale of Two Auditoriums (1|2)
Everyone A Witness
Pages 123-131
TOGETHER read the book and the scripture.
END READING AT: …produces a cultural change and fruitfulness in collective witness.
INDIVIDUALLY take notes in your journal on what stands out.
Ecclesiastes 3 (NIV) A Time for Everything
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account. And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment—wickedness was there, in the place of justice—wickedness was there. I said to myself, “God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed.”
I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”
So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?
TOGETHER pray for one another.
INDIVIDUALLY answer the questions in your journal - process your notes and pray.
Who’s your ‘one’? Who is the first person on your person map you are going to pray for until they come to faith?
Imagine our whole group or church did this? What would happen?
EXTRA READING:
Oskar Schindler (1908 - 1974) was a German living in Czechoslovakia when he joined the Nazi party in 1939. When Germany invaded Poland later that same year, he moved to Krakow and took over two manufacturing companies and, like many other businessmen there, made his fortune using cheap labor - Jews and deporting Jews in the ghetto. Oskar was moved to transfer the Jewish workers from his factory to a safe place. Later, he received permission from the Germans to move not only his workers but other Jews as well to his native land of Czechoslovakia.
Over time, Schindler’s occupation changed until, ultimately, the rescue of the Jews became his top priority. Using the factory as cover, he saved more and more Jews, putting his own life in danger to ensure the safety of those in his protection. At one point, when a train carrying more than a thousand Jews was on its way to a new factory site in Czechoslovakia, it was accidentally diverted to Auschwitz (an extermination camp estimated to have killed 1.1 million Jews). Schindler offered Nazis diamonds and gold to make sure those in his care reached safety. Ultimately, Schindler saved twelve hundred Jews from extermination, and today there are more than seven thousand descendants of the “Schindler Jews” living in the world. Through his actions, Schindler was a living example of the reality of human decency, love, goodness, and compassion in the face of unspeakable horror. He has been called an unlikely hero, not only because nothing in his prior life suggested the extent of his heroic deeds but also because he was an ordinary man who did extraordinary things. His life is a testament to the fact that we are called to put our faith into action, sometimes in the most unexpected, bold, and courageous ways. Oskar Schindler said, “He who saves one life saves the entire world.”