“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.” –Colossians 3:12-15
I think one of the most painful things for me to do is look in my closet, specifically the back part of it. Back there is a wonderland of middle school angst, and high-price brands that were definitely not worth the money. Every high school memory I have is tucked away in my closet, and I literally cringe at the thought of all the money I wasted on those clothes instead of buying things I needed (like chicken). The back of my closet is more than a storage unit for the embarrassing fashion statements I was trying to make.
Those clothes remind me of a girl who was trying to fit into a community, so she became whatever she needed to be in order to find a place within her peers. Those clothes represent a girl who went half her life not knowing what it meant to be loved by a group of Christ-followers. That girl was lost, and it was because she didn’t have a community that pushed her to be better, or loved her just the way she was designed to be. The worst part was that she didn’t see the need to be in a tight Christian community. She didn’t understand the point of walking with other Christians, and she didn’t understand how to be a good, healthy member of that community.
In the New Testament, there are multiple examples and models of community, and why it’s important. Paul writes letter after letter to churches that he had built relationships with while he traveled around sharing who Jesus was, and what he had done. Christ himself even showed community when he shared his personal life with twelve men. We are creatures who were created for community, but live in a generation that has lost the importance of that idea. We’d rather figure out everything alone than share our burdens. We’d rather be wrapped up in our daily lives than take the time to check up on another member of our community. We’d rather be right than be wrong and save a relationship.
We are a generation that doesn’t grasp the importance of walking this life in unity with one another. In Proverbs 27: 17, it says that “As iron sharpens iron, so another man sharpens another.” The reason why Christians live such dull lives is because there isn’t a Christian community that is sharpening them. If only I would have understood that at age fifteen, instead of twenty. If only I would have spent my energy in being a part of a Christian community, maybe I would have saved some money on clothes… maybe I would have been able to understand the importance of loving each other. If I would have been in a community I would have understood that my worth wasn’t in the stitching that made up my clothes, but in the stitching that God put in me.
We are called to love, serve, and be in one accord as Christians. It is only through those things that we’ll be able to find community, and it is through the stitching of community that we’ll being to understand the true power it has on the lives of those in it.
