Friendship With GodSample

Day 8 - Community with God

We are created in God’s image and He is perfect community. God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit exist in perfect community and unity yet are distinct. This is not a deep theological discussion so we won’t delve deep. If then, we are created in His image, we are created to be exist in community.  

One of my favorite books on community is “Life Together” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In it, he gives this caution: “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community…Let him who is not in community beware of being alone…Each by itself has profound perils and pitfalls…Only in the fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in the fellowship.”  

What I love about this is that it highlights the truth that we need both community but also times of being alone in order to function in community. You see Jesus often wake up earlier than the disciples and go off to be alone to pray…to talk with the Father. In that place He was filled to overflowing so that He could spill out love all over everyone whom He encountered. Think about when Peter lobbed off the High Priest’s servant’s ear…He didn’t lash out at him; He told him that wasn’t what they were doing and fixed the man’s ear.  

Today consider where God is inviting you. Do you spend a lot of time alone and He is drawing you into community to truly be known? Perhaps you are not able to be still or silent and He is beckoning you to come and sit with Him. Take some time to go where He is going today.