The longer I live, the more I realize that all of us are damaged some how. We just try to cover it up. We put up guards and barriers to try to keep people from finding out about our imperfections because, honestly, it is scary and risky when we let people in and expose our secrets and the things that make us not normal. So what we do to combat this is keep people at arm’s length; we don’t share with other people what we are really thinking. We don’t let people know our real hopes, dreams and desires because we’re afraid that for some reason we may not live up to our own expectations, and we don’t want everyone to know about them in case we fail and don’t meet them. We keep our conversations shallow, only talking about the latest news, or what is going on at work, and family vacations, and we fail to share with people our true feelings and thoughts. This is dangerous when we keep our relationships superficial. It can become lonely. We can seclude ourselves from everyone around us and try to live in our own little bubble. This is not the way God has created us to live. He has made us to live in community.
As you guys all know, in the book of Genesis, we have the account of creation that was written down Moses, and there we find this long list of things that God is pleased with. We know that He is pleased with what He has made because He says “that it was good”. We see that when He created the light and He saw that it was good and then separated the light from the darkness. Then we see God separate the dry land from seas, and, again, He says it was good. Then, later in chapter 1, we see God’s creation of man, and in chapter 2, we see his response to his creation of man, and, after his many statements of “And It Was Good,” we find just opposite in Gen 2:18 where he says “It is not good, for the man to be alone.” If God says that it is not good for us to be alone, why should we think for any reason that we should keep to ourselves and try to live a life of solitude? We should be seeking out community and living in it. Not only has he made us to live in community, we all need community. We need to live in community, and I believe that from the scriptures, we can easily see the church should be the ultimate way that we fill this in our lives; being in community with one another and doing life together as a family. If we don’t do this, we are in danger of becoming lonely, depressed, and discouraged. We need others in the body of Christ to lift each other up and encourage each other in all the areas of our lives.
I believe that if we start living in genuine community and get along, love, and care for one another that we can make a change in this world.
