Together-ness: Where You Go I Go
45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2.45-47)
As a Believer, one of the concepts that I’ve been wrestling with and trying to wrap my brain around is “togetherness” – the idea that as followers of Christ we should be living life, being church, and in general just being together.
The society that we live in today promotes individualism and independence, which are not necessarily bad things, but at the end of the day can leave us isolated, alone, and struggling on our own personal little islands.
I believe God has placed in our hearts a desire for togetherness. In it’s simplest form, it’s the desire to just be with others. We see it throughout most of all creation. Packs, herds, prides, flocks, schools, gaggles, covies, etc. We like to group according to our shared purposes, qualities, hobbies, traits, etc.
One thing that has blessed my heart the last few months is hearing my closest friends say that they’d love to move with us. We’re making a major life move in the next few months. The very idea that anyone would want to entertain the possibility of picking up everything finding new jobs and basically starting over because we’re friends AMAZES me! Obviously, just because they want to doesn’t mean they’ll actually do it, but like I said, just the thought is beautiful.
Do you have relationships like that?
Hey,
tell’em I said “the more, the merrier”. Sometimes I think it would be the opposite for us, they’d be saying “get outta here”!
You know, I’m not sure we have friends who are that close. I could be wrong, but … given all our friends live near their families, and are mainly Eastern European where family comes before friends … as much as we love them and they love us, I can’t see this happening.
It’s very cool though! True community.
@Fred: Will do!
@David: That’s an interesting thought. I’ll probably blog on that today or tomorrow!
Totally understand this concept… having a loving community where we are free to be independent individuals and are accepted by those around us is fantastic. Yes society promotes that kind of thing but it also promotes community and the shared experience.
I have friends like that ;)
Graham, nice! We’ve been exploring “better” community for the last year now, and though it means maybe not “knowing” or hanging out with as many people in the “church” as we used to feel we “had” to, I think our friendships are actually stronger and more grounded because of it.