True Community

Romans 13:2 “Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable. John F. Kennedy

Community is not just a “buzz word” of our day; it’s how God designed us to live, “in community.” Now there are different spheres of community. There is your family and neighborhood. There is your work and school. God did not design us to go through life isolated—we were created for community.

We tend to be rugged individualists, but when tragedy strikes, universally, we all cling to something or someone.  But the drift to individualism is strong, so very quickly we go back to ourselves, and we have to fight the tendency.  That’s the power of a relationship with God and a significant relationship with a community of Faith.

Think about it, you’d think when tragedy strikes, people would be there, they are for a while, and many for a long time, but all too often, people drift away, and it takes another tragedy to bring us back to that place of commitment to God and to others.

Terminal disease does that.  You’d think people would show up to be there for a friend, but in reality, many don’t know what to do or say, so they do nothing. They avoid people, even friends.

Every family is unique.  You can’t fix the situation, but you can be there, and the longer you’re there, the more apparent it becomes what their unique situation is, and you can speak to that and bring comfort.  You can work on your own relationship with God, family, and friends.

A terrible event happened in our community. Some time ago, a police officer was killed in the line of duty. His wife wrote an open letter to the community a few weeks after his death. She said being in a community doesn’t mean everybody looks the same and thinks the same. Disagreement is part of every community, but at its heart are peace and respect. At the end, she said, “Hug your family.”