“Reality is like a fine wine,” he said to me. “It will not appeal to children.” — p.11
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about community. Not just the automatic group affiliation kind, but the authentic and rare occurrence of knowing and being known by others. I suppose community can happen at various levels: a sports team, a neighborhood, or sometimes even among people at work. But the best and most sought after community, it seems to me, is through Christian family like church, or in a close circle of Christian friends.
And sometimes it seems very rare for some individuals.
One of the more touching examples of community I was fortunate to witness happened not so long ago to people I actually know. One person was undergoing treatment for cancer. She had to go to another city to have surgery. I can only imagine how she must have felt, the fear of what might happen, the emotional stress of trying to deal with uncertainty, and the physical strain of travel on top of chemotherapy. But she didn’t have to go through that without support. Her supervisor at work and his wife accompanied her and her husband to the medical center and stayed there until the surgery was over. They didn’t say, “She has physical family to tend to all that” or “I’m busy with work. I can’t take off.” He took the days off, they paid for lodging while they were there, and they went to some effort. They didn’t send a card in their place. They didn’t use prayer as a way to do something easy while avoiding personal contact or more extensive time commitments. They dropped everything and went, and it was their pleasure to do so.
I wrote in an earlier post that certain things about a formulaic approach to the gospel are appealing to me. Formulas are concrete. They suggest direction. They offer steps to follow, something specific to do. Do the steps and the results are supposed follow. Relationships, on the other hand, are rarely as simple. Real relationships can be messy. People don’t always respond as we think they should. You can’t set them aside and expect to take them up again when you have time. You have to nurture them. And they require letting go of self so that you can allow the relationship to touch you deep inside and maybe even change you. Relationships require risk. Maybe that is what is behind Donald Miller’s story of how reality is an acquired taste. Not everyone will choose the complicated, messy way over the simple, quick-fix promise of the formula. But the reality is that relationships and community are one of the few real things in this life because they are one of the few things that reach beyond this earth and let us glimpse a piece of God.
Donald Miller goes on to say on page 11, ” … the times in my life when I have been most happy haven’t been the times when I’ve had the most money or the most freedom or the most anything, but rather when I’ve been in love or in community or right with people.” That’s the reality I want. That’s the taste I want to acquire, because ultimately it is the only taste that can satisfy.
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