"Come forward and put your arm around someone"

Those words make me cringe. I hate being forced to touch people and physically love on them, being pushed outside of my comfort zone.

My pastor is really good at that, pushing me out of my comfort zone. I guess that is part of his job, right?

Often at the end of our worship service he calls the whole congregation together. He calls us out of our seats, and we link arms around the sanctuary, pray together, worship together, and simply be in community.

Ah, community. 


Community is so different than what we as Americans want. We want individualism, but time and time again, Jesus calls us to live in community. To grow in community. To struggle together in community. To strive together in community. To be a part of redemption in community.

This is so hard!!!

My knee-jerk reaction is to buck and community and scream "I don't need you. I can do this on my own!!!"

I am learning to love community. I am learning that I need to lean on other people and other people need to learn on me. I am learning that we are all part of the body, and together we move.

After our worship service together a beautiful thing happened. We joined together in worship, declaring that Jesus was all to us. Children in the church came and put their hands on our pastor and prayed for him (he is leaving on a missions trip), and together ended our service.

Tonight, my mind is on community.

Sweet, community.