Day 1 - The Energy of Community: LOVE

You will hear me this weekend tie in our life in community to the life of God. Try as we might to make all aspects of life about us, our very being still begins with a life that's outside of our own...that divine Spirit that blows over the waters of chaos in Genesis 1 and causes from that chaos beautiful life and order to emerge where there was none. And then at the end of that first creative act, in Genesis 1:26, God says about you and I, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness..."

This is to say that you as an individual are not necessarily imagio dei...the image of God. Rather, you in community are. And you are especially as certain characteristics flow between you and those you are in community with around you: when love is present -- not the self-serving kind, but the self-giving kind; when there's affirmation; when there's a sense that the sum of who we are together is much greater than who we are individually. This is powerful stuff.

I know that many of us struggle with the same sorts of things. Our circumstances and the particulars of our lives may look different, but we're all DOING life in the same way: by ourselves and on our own steam. It's a recipe for burnout and for hopelessness. You weren't created to live life like this. I wasn't created to live life like this. This is why God designed a universe where there can be no "I" without a "we."

So who's your "we?" Who's in your life that loves you with the love of Christ? That prayers for you daily? That knows the spiritual, mental and physical battles you are working through? Who holds you accountable to a life "walking wet" in the baptismal waters that hold you? Who serves Christ in the world with you? Who you can reciprocate all these things with and through?

My prayer is that as this journey launches you are plugged into a "40 Days of Community" small group so that if you can't answer these questions, you could begin forming the community and relationships that will allow you to begin to answer them in the affirmative.

My exhortation for each of us today? "Reach for each other! And as you do so, discover deeper, more purposeful, more powerful, more hopeful life!"

See you tomorrow here at the Spirit Porch. Peace!

Pastor Nathan