Tag: community

We Were Made for Meaning

Late one night when the noises in the dorm rooms around me faded, I sat on my floor asking big questions. Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life?

unsplash 1 rain

It was my Junior year at Belhaven College. Only one more year until graduation. Shouldn’t I know what I wanted to be when I grew up by now?

In those quiet moments I read 2 Corinthians 5:14.

For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, for but Him who died for them and rose again.

From this verse I gathered that I was supposed to live for Christ and not for myself.

But what does it mean to live for Christ?

If I had written this post on that night twenty-something years ago, I would probably have written a list, a “10 Ways to Live For Him” that would have sounded very spiritual and pretty near impossible. I’m sure an hour-long devotion at 5:00 am before your big toe hits the floor would have made the list.

Thank goodness blogging hadn’t been invented yet.

The truth is that “living for Him and not for ourselves” will probably look different for each of us. It even looks different in each season of our own lives. Living for Him may involve caring for your mother or father while they struggle with cancer or Alzheimer’s. It may involve changing 1,234 diapers in a season of caring for babies. It may mean waiting. Waiting for a relationship, waiting for a child, waiting for an answer. Waiting and clinging to His promises.

But behind the scenes “living for Him and not for ourselves” looks pretty similar in each of our lives. Living for Him involves getting to know Him and learning to hear His voice.

We get to know Him by talking to Him through prayer, by reading His Word, by being part of a community of people who are also living for Him, a place where our faith can be encouraged and strengthened.

The word for compels is a Greek word that means to hold together, to compress, to arrest. The love of Christ holds us together.

The word compels mean to force or drive, especially to a course of action.What action does the love of Christ drive us to?

When we grasp what He has done for us, the love of Christ toward us drives us to live for Him, and not for ourselves. We live for Him in response to His love for us.

My 10 ways – list-making-college-self lived for Him in order to earn His love. What a waste. The glorious truth is that We already have His love! The life He lived and the death He died is proof of His love for us. There is nothing to earn, but plenty to be thankful for.

In the process of living for Him we get to know Him. As we get to know Him we grow closer to Him. And no matter what our season of life looks like on the outside, growing closer to Him brings meaning to our life.

IMG_2003

We Were Made For Community

The word community could mean a group of people who live in the same place or who work together, people who have common interests, people who think alike.

This is not the type of community I want to talk about.

To commune means to converse or talk together, usually with profound intensity, intimacy, etc.; interchange thoughts or feelings. 2. To be in intimate communication or rapport (Thank you, Dictionary.com)
ity  is a suffix used to form abstract nouns expressing state or condition.
Commune-ity – The state or condition of being in intimate communication or rapport.
Now, this is what we were made for.

This was my first commune-ity. These are the friends who knew me. The ones I played with, fought with, and leaned on. With these girls I learned that friendship means apologizing, and forgiving, and speaking the hard truth even when no one is listening. These are the first friends who became “my people.” They taught me the importance of friendship and the richness of knowing and being known.

IMG_4683

Of course, we were just kids. We didn’t know we were forming the building blocks of friendship in each other. We didn’t know we were teaching each other about commune-ity so that we would know how to find friends throughout our lives.

These are the girls I played Charlie’s Angels with on the third grade playground, giggled over crushes with in Junior High, and struggled with life, relationships, and Chemistry in High School. These were my people for late night talks, school projects (THAT time line in 10th grade Humanities Class), MTV (Thriller and Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You). We went to scary movies and made each other laugh during the scariest parts. We were silly and obnoxious and we loved each other fiercely.

Then we lost touch for over 25 years.

Could we reconnect? We had missed so much in each other’s lives: marriages, divorce, children, mommy moments, miscarriages, marriage struggles.

Had we missed too much, I wondered. Will the gap be too wide?

As we planned our mini-reunion, I found letters written during those lost years. Letters that helped us through the first lonely months of college, letters that grew sporadic as marriage and kids and careers filled our lives. And these letters poured over with life-giving words.

You are a blessing.  I am praying for you.

I know you can succeed. Don’t throw away the abilities and opportunities that God gives you.

I’m so thankful for your friendship.

And when the four of us finally re-connected, those words hadn’t changed.

Though years had gone by, and there were many details to fill in, our heart for each other hadn’t changed.

IMG_5508

We were made for this type of community, for knowing and being known. We all need “our people” in our lives. People who know who we are in the depths of our being. People who love us for our strengths and weaknesses, who encourage and support us. People who are good for our heart, and refreshing for our soul.

I’m so glad you are here!

My hope is that this blog will be a place of hope and refreshment for all who visit.

I believe each one of us is wired for hope. Because the world around us is broken, we have to fight for hope, sometimes with every breath.

There is no script for much of life and at times our hope wavers on the edge of the chasm called despair. Our fight for hope in all areas of our lives takes great courage.

“Hope is by far one of the most dangerous commitments we make in life.”  Dan B. Allender

My hope is that this will be a community where we, as fighters for hope, can encourage and challenge each other to be brave and to keep fighting.