Friday, January 30, 2015

Community

"Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ. If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life together

OUCH !!!!

That hurt. I'm a ground hog. I like to hibernate, particularly in the winter, but there is apparently no hibernation for the Christian groundhog.

We live in a culture that thrives on individuality - not that there's anything wrong with that :>)

But Christ calls us to live in community; to submerge ourselves in Him and each other as His body on earth. We must attain the full stature of Christ and we cannot do that as solitary individuals. Christian maturity is reached in the inter connectivity of the members of the Body with each other and with Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Our culture militates against this. The individual is heralded and celebrated for rebelling against the status quo and sometimes Christians will bring this philosophy into the church.

To be sure, we all have different gifts and we are individual souls, but when we are knit together as the Body, our strength can become unmeasurable.

We were created in the image of God. He wants His creations to be in relationship with Him and not in a one on one sense. He wants to be our God and for us to be His people - together.

None of this means that we have to be carbon copies of each other. We will not be. But we can work together, using our individual talents and gifts for the single minded purpose that Christ has set us to.

I think I'm finding my place in this body. I'm surely part of the brain!

My friend Gary likes to quote Solomon: "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." Maybe that's my purpose in the body. I could become the whetstone of the Church. There's a scary thought. I will work on that. See you Sunday.

As Gary would say, "go to Sunday school"