Its interesting how one day of slackness can ruin your flow, can take you down a notch. I blame the fact that I had a crazy weekend, and could not get focus.
I was talkking with and we ended up having a chat about relationships (two of us was were single, one has a girlfreind - so I do not know how educated the conversation could be!) Anyway we were chatting and one of the guys was talking about that fact he has found it hard in his adult hood to develop strong relationships and feels that it is hard to because he is worried he is going to lose them. He holds out the fact that when he gets married this pain may go away.,
I found this hard to listen to. I see relationships in life are essential to our being. I think it is interesting that we often we easily walk with the limp that we have in our life, and we can do it suprisingly well. We do not see that we are living unhealthy lives until the balls are too many and we drop them all.
I recently read the "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller. Donald Miller is a bit of a loner, and likes to be alone. He conciously has to choose to live in community, and knows that without community he will become sick from his own selfishness. I know from living in a flat and with others it can be difficult. We can desire our own needs. We think we can live on our own, outside of community. Only to find that we cannot fulfil our potential as humans without it.
I have been thinking alot about community lately. Community is a gift - an ideal that we live up to. It is a cry of many people in our generation to find community. People look for relationship/community through social networking sites, they go to concerts to find comradery with others who have the same taste in music as them (you can find your new best freind for five seconds at that concert). People are craving for identity, longing and a place to call home. We long for it, but find it hard to find in our world.
The promise of the Gospel is that God has called us out of our loneliness, out of our selfishness into a loving community that he has created to bring hope to the world. This community is called the church, the body of Christ.
Monday, March 01, 2010
conversations with mates
Labels:
Community,
Individualism.
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2 comments:
Unfortunately though, even church communities are not perfect and many people are put off them because of what goes on within them. I myself see gossip happening in the church community I'm a part of, and I have been burned by friends in the church. It made me question if church really is the community I should be a part of. There are so many other communities in which I've not been burned by the people I trusted.
You're right that people search for community and long to have relationships with others. And you're right that God's church is the community that everyone SHOULD be a part of, the community that SHOULD be all-inclusive, more meaningful and high above the other communities we find in this world. But forgive my pessimism - I'm not convinced it really is. People don't come to church because they are not always finding love within its community. Which makes me sad. :(
Your blog is cool btw!
Hi Chelsea, thanks for the comments and for the encouragement.
I think one of the greatest risks of community is when we get to know people deeply, we can hurt each other the deeply. Sharing life with one another is risky buisiness and takes courage. It is true that married couples or close friends can cause the greatest pain and the greatest rifts to one another because they know each other deeply.
When we live intensely with one another, we often see peoples best and worst moments. Humanity is broken and munted and our muntedness can often create pain.
The maturity of a community is seen in its ability to work through this.
I have seen a few times where bad mistakes have been made in community, and people have left with pain, it requires wisdom to work through this and it takes time to bring restoration of this, it can take months or years.
Feel free to keep on talking about this on the blog.
Nate
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