Community

Tonight I went to a visitation for a young man who had passed away last week and had to wait in line to get to the family. I was awestruck! They had two lines going into the funeral chapel and the people kept coming. I was thankful there had been a private time for the family because there was none of that today at either visitation.

While I was standing in line a thoughts struck me about community, how we interact in each others lives and with other people, how a chance meeting could have a life long result, about people in the body of Christ but not only that but about a community in general. The families had been part of two communities for a long time and had work and served in both. They attended church, supported school activities, opened their homes to their children's friends, and to their neighborhoods. Their children had followed their example. The result of this example was the people that have sent their condolences, food, support, cards and love.

I listened as comments were made about how the families had touched the communities they live, work, fellowship, and play in. A revelation of sorts has started to form about being a part of a community and about what that means as a Jesus follower.

I have heard over the years of course that the job of the church was to "win souls for Christ", for heaven, to help them escape eternal damnation or an eternity in hell. I have heard we are preach to the poor, set the captive free, bind up the broken-hearted. I have heard we are to preach to the ends of the earth and that we should be a community unto our own and shut the rest of the world out and wait to fly away. It is all true and I believe most of what has been said.

But what I seen tonight just really made a gospel real. Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. This is the greatest commandment. The second greatest commandment is, "Love your neighbor as yourself." John in his three letters talks much about loving God and loving each other and even though Jesus said that we would do greater works than He and certain signs would follow those that confessed His name. I am sure we all would have rejoiced had this young man sit up in his casket, well after we got over the shock of that happening but what greater "sign" could there have been than that kind of love and caring.

A sign of the sacrifice many people made to take time and drive to another city, to stand in line, to bear others up whose hearts are breaking. To witness several communities to come together to lift up another friend, relative, co-worker, and church goer. To know that each person was bearing an image of God to each other there even.

This is what, I am sure, Isaiah was referring to when he wrote to preach the gospel to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, and give an oil of gladness for a spirit of mourning. This is what Jesus was talking about in His priestly prayer to His Father to "make his followers one just as you and I are one." In a world that is torn by disappointment, grief, hurt, and all those ugly emotions but we can even rejoice with one another when a new child is added to our family, we achieve a goal, a diploma, a new job, or to care for one another after a surgery, a car accident, a move or a change from the daily grind.

I seen it tonight, I have experienced in my own life, and I have seen it in larger venues such as conferences this is when the Jesus follower's shine. It is with this sign, this love, this feeling of community that the world will truly see a God unlike any other gods of the world.