God has been teaching me a ton about community lately. More specifically, His idea of community. As I continue to seek His heart, I’m stretched. I’m daily reminded of His goodness and provision as I look around at this community He has surrounded me with. We are simply living life together. It’s fun, it’s hard, it’s vulnerable, it’s stretching, it’s life giving. Something tells me that the lessons God is teaching us and the eternal impact of this is much bigger than it seems.
Recently, a friend shared an article by John Eldridge with me. The topic of discussion was community. I’ve taken a few excerpts from it to include here, and I’m chewing on these words…
Living in community is like camping together. For a month. In the desert. Without tents. All your stuff is scattered out there for everyone to see. C’mon-anybody can look captured for Christ an hour a week at church, from a distance, in his Sunday best. But your life is open to those you live in community with.
A true community is something you’ll have to fight for. You’ll have to fight to get one, and you’ll have to fight to keep it afloat. But you fight for it as you bail out a life raft during a storm at sea. You want this thing to work. You need this thing to work. You can’t ditch it and jump back on the cruise ship. This is the church; this is all you have. Without it, you’ll go down. Or back to captivity.
God is calling together little communities of the heart, to fight for one another and for the hearts of those who have not yet been set free. That camaraderie, that intimacy, that incredible impact by a few stouthearted souls-that is available. It is the Christian life as Jesus gave it to us. It is completely normal.
