At first I thought my monster of a cat (the whopping 28-pound hairy beast, who weighs more than my two-year-old) was just scratching hard on the wall in the adjacent room.  Then all the chimes in the house rang out from every corner and the girls screamed that everything was shaking in their room.

I waited for air raid sirens or bombs and hushed my daughters until my puzzled little mind finally figured it out.

An earthquake.  In Virginia.  Well that’s weird.

Facebook was abuzz with excitement.  People posted every place they felt it up and down the East Coast.  The lines were too busy to get calls through at first and then the text messages were flying and my phone was ringing.

The news channel interrupted their regularly scheduled broadcast for this breaking news story.  Reporters called in and popped on camera, each wanting to tell their tale before they actually gave any news.  “I was in my car.”  “I was in Norfolk.”  “I was in the office.”  Oh yeah, and we’ll tell you about the epicenter and the seismic plates and the damage and the extent after we tell you what we personally experienced.

In this world now, most experiences are shared ones. The moment we feel something, we hop onto the Internet and scroll through comments to see who’s feeling it, too.

With lines of communication near instantaneous, the news updates about as quickly as my blink.

Wow, I just felt the whole house shake.  Did you feel that?
Blink.
Oh my goodness I felt that in DC!
Blink.
An earthquake.  We had an earthquake and they felt it in NY and NC too!
Blink.
A 5.8 earthquake in Virginia.   That’s crazy!
Blink.

We’re stirring each other up, getting others excited about what is happening to us and wanting to make sure that we’re not crazy and we’re not alone.  We want to know what he’s doing and she’s feeling and are we all okay or what?

Are we that in tune with one another all the time?  Are we stirred up and excited or scared enough to set Facebook and Twitter ablaze with the shaking of the earth going on around us all the time?

In Hebrews, we’re encouraged to

“consider one another in order to stir up love and good works^, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24 NKJV).

We’re supposed to be agitating for kindness and advocating for love.  It’s why we Christians are supposed to be doing this faith-walk together, never abandoning the church as mere “religion.”  Because we’re meant to be sharing our experiences one with another and letting the news updates fly so fast that we’re stirred up in our hearts to get involved.  No pew-sitting, casual worshiping, but active and excited, hands-on “love and good works.”

Did you see what God did?  Did you know about this need?  Can you believe how amazing God was?  Did you feel that move of the Spirit?  Is it just me, or do you see God working over here?  What should we be doing?

That’s the buzz we should feel among each other.

And the nearer we see “the Day” approaching, the more stirring up we should be doing.  Earthquakes in random places twice in the same day, tsunamis, hurricanes, wildfires.  We better mix it up down here because that’s the definition of “the Day.”

Peter took this so seriously he wrote about it to the church as he neared death.  He said:

“For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me” (2 Peter 1:12-13).

What was it he so urgently needed to remind them about?  He stirred them up “to add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love” (2 Peter 1:5-7).

He told them to dig deep in their faith, learning all they can and then putting it into action, striving for godliness, practicing kindness, and being God’s Love to a world desperate for it.

How are you stirring up those around you?  Are you grabbing the hands of others and calling for them to run to God as hard as you can?

Or are you agitating for a new minister or complaining about the Sunday School format and gossiping about the ministry leader or writing nasty emails to the committee head?

Are you stirring up the church leaders so you can have more programs to make you happy and comfortable or are you stirring up the hearts of others to know Jesus?  To be passionate about His Word.  To be ready for His return.  To be a living, breathing touch of Christ to a world in hurting need and confusion.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2011 Heather King