The biggest problem people have in searching for community is just that. You don't find community; you create it through love. Look how this transforms the way you enter a room full of strangers. Our instinctive thought is, "Who do I know? Who am I comfortable with?" There's nothing wrong with those questions, but the Jesus questions that create communities are, "Who can I love? Who is left out?"
Here are two different formulas for community formation:
1. Search for community where I am loved: become disappointed with community
2. Show hesed love: create community--Paul Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships (Crossway, 2014), 100; italics original
If you're looking for community where the focus is on you, you will never find it. But if you're willing to love others you will create the community you are looking for. I have meet many Christians who are disappointed with church and have a trail of broken relationships behind them, who will never admit the problem is their own self-centeredness. They cry and complain 'if only I could find a place where I will be loved' and they never find it because they can't get the focus off themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment