After Thanksgiving dinner my family and I were travelling through the myriad mess of construction known as northern Virginia. Going from Virginia to Maryland, switching one set of relatives for another, along came a rare opportunity to reflect and simply think. I popped in my headphones and put on some music I hadn’t really heard before.
I was thinking about and thankful for the community of people that have surrounded me in recent months. The people and the relationships developed so far this semester have made it far and away the best of my time at AU. Then the melancholy musings of a certain Charlie Fink reached my ears: “I’m the flower that you’re keeping / that without love will wilt and die”. I took the lyrics into the context I was already thinking in, and it hammered a resonant chord within me.
Without love we wilt and die. We know this. Without God’s love and wrath (yes, wrath) and grace we are nothing. But I challenge anyone and everyone who reads this to impart this idea into their relationships around them. An odyssey with Jesus is not meant to be undertaken alone. When it comes to the most momentous course of action you’ll ever take, can you honestly trust yourself to do it right without anyone else? As Christians we asphyxiate spiritually in the absence of a loving and real community. If we can't do it by ourselves, neither can anyone around us. We must be a loving body of Christ.
When it comes to love, bible verses are dime-a-dozen (not to demean the value of any one verse of course). But I go back to our latest brother/sister small group and I can’t help but think that this one verse in particular is picture perfect:
“Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love” 1st John 4:8.
What kind of people are we if we don’t try to love all of those we consider part of our community? It's our duty, an imperative action, to attempt and show what a true brotherhood, a true sisterhood is. Let's not let anyone go without the knowledge of God through our love.
Don’t be afraid to be a part of that community. Run towards it. Be someone to somebody, and allow them to thrive. Love them for who they are, and for who God intends them to be. You might be surprised at the marked difference doing so creates.
I certainly know the effect such a community has on a person.
Because you guys have been that to me.