WE Need Community

     Over the past few weeks we have been talking about our need for community.  We've described community as us having authentic relationships with people that go deeper than the surface level friendships that we comfortably slip into.  Community is about doing life with other people.  So many times we get so focused on ourselves that we struggle to see outside of ourselves.  We think this self-focus will lead us satisfaction but in the end we find ourselves lonely. 

     Genesis paints a picture of our need for community as God looks on Adam alone in a beautiful, near perfect garden surrounded by the beauty of nature and all kinds of animals and he sees that it is not good for Adam to be alone.  God does not want us to be alone.  Often our loneliness is self-imposed, its the result of our fear to be truly known and of truly knowing others.  Or maybe we don't experience the fullness of right relationships because we've blown it in some way, we've damaged our relationship with others, we've burned bridges and we don't want to deal with it, we can't muster up the courage to admit to mess-ups and so we continue on alone.  God does not want us to be alone.

     An unfortunate part of our world is that there are lots of people out there who are alone and they are struggling to find a way out.  We have a tendency to push people aside who are not like us, people who for whatever reason aren't the people we want sitting next to us at the dinner table.  Jesus calls us to look after the widows and the orphans, those who especially in the culture of his day were utterly alone.  True community does more than simply seek out authentic relationships with those who are "like us" - it goes deeper, it seeks to find the alone and pull them into community.  God does not want anybody to be alone.  We must develop eyes to see the lonely and hearts to pursue them and invite them into true community.

     As we pursue community in these ways, we learn about God in ways we can never dream.  We have our own views of how we see the world but when we begin to enter into true community with others, our worldview opens up and we become able to see the world in ways we never have before.  We may think we know about God, but we gain a much fuller image of God as we do life with other people who are pursuing God.  True community can be difficult, it can even be scary at times as we open ourselves up but as we truly begin to do life with others we will begin to experience the beauty of God, love, and life in ways we never could have imagined before.  Seek God, seek true community.