Well we just got back from our annual small group retreat at a little place tucked in the woods called Geneva Hills. What a gift to get to be with these people for the weekend and remember memories from retreats before and make new memories to recall when we're unable to walk right next to each other through life here in a few months. It was precious time.
I watched a dear friend this morning struggle at watching her children make poor choices and I watched another mother who has been through some of the tough having teenagers stuff walk over and just hold her as she cried. I thought, "I like us." I heard and saw people laughing until we had tears running down our cheeks. I heard my friend who had for a while lost the song in his heart sing out last night to the Father and it was as if you could see the angels jump around and join him. I talked with people I love. I watched other people I love sit and talk and just love being together. I watched so many hugs I couldn't count them. I watched hubbies and wives be loving and kind and hold hands and just be cute and love spending time together. I watched younger couples sit near some older couples and talk and listen and learn. I heard us pray together and praise together and oh did we EAT together.
You may find a common theme in several of my posts. I LOVE these people. I LOVE community and what you learn there. I suppose it keeps coming up in these posts because it is so much of what God is teaching me right now. We may learn a whole lot from walking through the church door and hearing good teaching and sitting on a pew...but I am convinced that you really learn about who God is and who God wants you to be when you allow yourself to connect with a group of other imperfect humans who are attempting to walk this thing out and you choose to do life together. You allow people to see the good, bad, and ugly in your walk with Him. You share enough of your heart so that when you have fervently, earnestly, asked God for things near your heart you are able to rejoice together because they've become not just "my" prayers but "our" prayers. You take care of one another's hearts in the way that you talk and behave with information you've been given in honest moments. You choose to fight everything in you which says "don't let them get too close and know too much" and you choose instead this uncomfortable vulnerability that brings with it some of life's richest blessings.
I know that God is teaching me that community is something you work at. It's something you invest into. It's something that you give to and that you are then able to take from. It's giving yourself away. It's learning how to love other people like Jesus and choosing the hard things that requires sometimes. It's asking God to help me think less of me and more of Him and in essence everyone else. It's being weak enough to say I need you, humble enough to say I fail, and aware and vulnerable enough to say I can't do this alone.
It is one of God's greatest gifts to me and something I will take away from this time in my life forever. God's family, a community that loves Him and loves others. I am so blessed to have learned from some really precious people and as we sat around the campfire this morning and shared prayers and memories I was fully aware that each of them were a gift from God to my heart, my life, and my journey with Him.
Thank you Father and thank you to this "community" God has handpicked for such a time as this in my life and my journey. I am one lucky girl.
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