Considering…

Blessings of Life Together

/ Will N. / Leave a comment

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Being called to live in community is one of the great invitations of the Christian faith, yet living in community also produces some of the most challenging aspects of the Christian life.

Whether we like it or not, life in community is not an add-on feature to our already-complete, neatly-packaged personal holiness- the gospel does not call us to a life of spiritual individualism and social isolation, but to a communal pilgrimage through our collective brokenness and the messiness of shared experience.

Christianity is not a solitary religion- we are called to walk this life of faith together.

I believe one of the blessings of this community relationship we are called to share is that believers are entrusted with a common vocabulary. Words that seem idealistic or even corny in the “real world” hold deep and abiding significance for those seeking to faithfully follow Jesus.

Joy, mercy, sacrifice, and commitment can be experienced by all people, but the believer recognizes God as the source of these and seemingly countless other virtues.

Broader society may acknowledge grace, compassion, and love, but the disciple of Jesus knows more than the intellectual definition of these words- he or she knows the One who personifies of these concepts as the divine Source of everything good, right, and true.

In addition to giving us an experienced terminology for understanding of the virtues found in God, the Christian community provides us with a unique bond of fellowship.

Wherever Christians go in the world, they already have a spiritual family awaiting them.

Anywhere we find disciples of Jesus, we have the ability to share an immediate intimacy that serves as a comfort and blessing. Whether we come together on the mission field, in the chapel of the local funeral home, at our children’s summer camp, or in a passing incident of daily life, Christians have a bond that is able- when faithfully applied- to transcend the outward divisions of race, gender, economics, politics, or age. The ability to pray for each other, to comfort each other, and to worship together greatly shapes the Christian experience.

We are to be the gathering of the redeemed- existing across and above life’s many external barriers.

As the song states, we share, “a common love for each other, a common gift to the Savior, a common bond holding us to the Lord, a common strength when we’re weary, a common hope for tomorrow, a common joy in the truth of God’s word.”

As we consider the implications of the Christian experience, one of the foremost blessings that we share is a sense of a mutual destiny.

In a world where we are often lulled into the comfortable complacency of daily life, we are to remind each other that our ultimate reality and ultimate hope of victory are not tied exclusively to the here and now.

While neither ignoring nor excusing the ever-present need for greater compassion and justice in our troubled world, believers are called to look beyond today’s headlines to the glory that awaits us as children of God.

By looking toward our grace-fueled, glorified future, we are empowered to live faithfully as we seek to share Christ’s love today.

This certainty of the future should dictate how we live day by day- not with our heads in the clouds ignoring suffering and strife, but with our hands active in service seeking to share the glory we have already tasted in Jesus.

Our life together as disciples of Jesus is marked with manifold blessings- a common vocabulary, a shared fellowship, and a united hope of salvation that spans geography, time, and outward differences.

Through His grace, our Father offers these gifts to each of us if we have hearts willing to receive them.

God of all questions…

/ Will N. / Leave a comment

Perhaps you have heard well-meaning folks facing difficult circumstances say, “Well, it’s just God’s will, and we can’t question it.”

We may have at times even expressed this idea ourselves. This statement usually arises from a mindset that trusting God without irreverently seeking to understand the deep mysteries of His ways is the marker of a genuine faith.

While this logic often springs from a sincere heart, is this the way we are intended to understand faith? Does biblical faith require us to suspend our questions?

If faithful people are never supposed to ask questions, none of our faith heroes were actually very faithful- Abraham (Gen 15:2), Moses (Exodus 3-4), David (Ps 22:1), and even Jesus (Mt 27:34) all expressed a questions desiring to know the Father’s will more fully. If Jesus, echoing David, could so publicly question His Father in the midst of His greatest trial, why do we so often presume that questioning why things happen is a sign of a weak faith?

Their questions were not a sign of a lack of faith, but a sign of a lack of clarity of why God had called them to a particular task or how a particular challenge was to be resolved. The questions were not just to gain information, but to more fully understand the why of their circumstances.

They actively wondered how a righteous God could (or would) bring about the very promises He had given when their outward circumstances seemed to declare just the opposite result was occurring. Do you ever wonder that too? I sure have at different points in my life.

In Judges, Gideon asks the Angel of the LORD, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’” (Judges 6:13) Is there an accusation in this query? Absolutely- at least on one level, but could his question not also be seen as confusion, frustration, or grief? Gideon believes the LORD has forsaken His people, and he lays his questions before God.

The LORD does not given Gideon a lecture; He instead empowers him with a clarifying mission. Often the answers we seek come not through a bright light of enlightenment but through a call to obedience and a reminder of God’s overarching promise that He will act for His glory and our good.

Sometimes Scripture answers questions by direct words or through the examples of others (Ps 119:105). Sometimes life’s circumstances resolve in such a way that we can seem to perceive the guiding hand of Providence working for our good (Rom 8:28). And sometimes the answers do not come, but we are the better for having asked the questions. If we learn more about God’s nature and our own spiritual journey through the process of questioning and struggle, may be the answer is not a single clean-cut truth, but the faith that emerges only through enduring the valleys of experience.

Paul writes in 1 Cor 13:12 that, “for now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” The fact we can only see dimly shouldn’t stop us from looking for God and examining our own lives as we seek to conform them to His will.

The promise of faith becoming sight should be seen an invitation to keep searching and wrestling with our faith- not an excuse to avoid exploring our hearts and seeking to know God more fully simply because our understanding in this moment is limited.

I believe that, by faith, one day we will know all we need to know, but until then may we have the courage to keep questioning and the conviction that He will answer in all the ways we most need here and now.