Living Above Challenges To Community

 We Are A Family

In every age there have been challenges to our sense of community.  These days the great challenge seems to be devices and the isolation that has was so increased during long months of pandemic restrictions and seems to have lingered these couple of years later. 

We need each other.  We were made for each other.  It’s only with others that our daily living and service truly finds completeness.  It’s not my idea.  It’s what God tells us when He says in His Word:

You are no longer strangers to God and foreigners to heaven, but you are members of God’s very own family, citizens of God’s country, and you belong in God’s household with every other Christian.

What a foundation you stand on now: the apostles and the prophets; and the cornerstone of the building is Jesus Christ himself!

We who believe are carefully joined together with Christ as parts of a beautiful, constantly growing temple for God. And you also are joined with him and with each other by the Spirit and are part of this dwelling place of God.

Ephesians 2:19-22

We belong to God’s household along with every other Christian.  That provides us with certain benefits and responsibilities.  The closer we get to others the easier it is for our differences to grate on one another but, more importantly, for the attention and care and support we can find in each other to keep us steady during challenging times. 

We can err from living as God intended by living isolated self-centered lives in our own little world and trying to find satisfaction with our own devices and activities.  We can also stray from God’s best for us by looking too much to our time with others to fill us up with what we need each day.  God carefully joins us together with others through Jesus. 

What’s my relationship with Jesus like today?  On a “best friend” scale, how high would Jesus rate?  God has created us for relationship and only in proper relationship with Jesus and others will we truly experience satisfaction today.

Heavenly Father, thank you for making us members of your family and giving us a place to belong.  Thank you for Jesus who made the way for us by dying for our sins so we could have relationship with you and then with others. 

Thank you for faithful witnesses to the truth and to living out family and community values that the church has been down through the centuries. 

Most of all thank you for the Holy Spirit who lives in us and who is at work in us, even today, to carefully join us with You and with others so we are part of a wonderful family where You can be at home. 

Help us to grow and thrive in our families, our churches, and our communities as you intended.  Amen

Where’s your family?  Who’s your family?  Let’s live well in relationship today.

Further Encouraging Thoughts For Today

Resources For 12 Steps