Community

Beautiful fall day here in Boston! I've been fortunate to have a nice relaxing morning with a good cup of ethiopian coffee and some excellent reading. Unfortunately, Katie hasn't had the same. She is on an elective week, which is supposed to be a great week working Monday to Friday, 9-5pm and weekends off. However, a stroke of unfortunate circumstances with some of her classmates has resulted in her filling in on a late call on Thursday and a working a 12hr shift in the bone marrow transplant floor today. We had plans to go hiking with friends today and then have a couple couples over for dinner from our community group. We're making the best of it though - we plan to hike tomorrow and we are still going to have our friends over for dinner - just now I'm cooking! Yikes! We'll see how that goes. Should be a fun time of community though.

Speaking of community (a smooth transition, I know), that is something I've been thinking about some recently, especially how fortunate Katie and I are to have been gifted with such great Christian community. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in "Life Together" speaking of Christian Community:

It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.

Through Christ, in community we have a spiritual reality in which we can experience encouragement and joy, hear the Word of God shared and see the Word lived out. John Piper in a recent Q&A also brought out the point that in community we have our identity shaped and our gifts developed and affirmed. He says:

My identity arose in community. You can’t go out into the woods and figure out who you are. It is just totally ambiguous. So you stay in the church and you love people and you do what you love to do and suddenly you start to discover who you are - in community.

"How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!" Psalm 133:1