Community

When you become a Christian you are immediately welcomed into a dynamic community - that of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It takes time to work out the different characters and beyond a lifetime to know them fully. However through it all we learn how to be taught, how to rest, how to receive, how to serve, how to grow and most importantly how to love.

We receive unconditional love and acceptance from the very beginning, however long it takes for us to accept it fully or even in part.

The more challenging part of community for me is the human embodiment of it - the church. Being part of a church community should be a physical manifestation of everything listed above - and there in lies the challenge.

We actively talk about and look to live out, giving people love, serving them, helping them to journey more closely with The Community that is God. But it seems we are less active in learning how to receive it.

Being a natural introvert, I have accepted the slightly annoying part of me that means I have to go away and hide from people every once in a while, in order to remain me, full of life and energised.
What I hadn't realised is that some of that "introvertness" was in fact just selfishness. Me wanting some of me, to myself, by myself. But that meant I was unwilling to receive from, give and rest, in the community.

I do think that individual identity and space are important, for so many different reasons. But I also know that in the west we, I especially, prize them more than is proper. It is pride that separates me from those with whom God has placed me.

It is in The Community that I find my ultimate identity, as a child of God. But crucially it is in the community, that I discover who that is, and importantly, acceptance of it; firstly from those around me and secondly, if a lot later, by me.

But I have happily discovered that in close community, where acceptance is there, if only I would receive it, I can rest and love, as I am loved.