Daily Encouragement: Day 360

Adapted from Handbook to Spiritual Growth

THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY

In the West, community has been deteriorating for years. Today, people are busier and lonelier than ever. “Time-saving” inventions have only made our lives more hyperactive and stress-filled, and our addictions to urgency and performance make us externally driven rather than internally called.

While we cannot return to the past, we can learn how to treasure relationships as ends rather than means, and we can recapture a transcending biblical vision of commitment and community that will make us more human and less controlled by our culture.

We come to faith as individuals but we grow in community. Life in Jesus is not meant to be solitary and individualistic, but shared and collective. Indeed, when we stand before Christ, we will be judged individually according to our works (2 Corinthians 5:10; Romans 14:12), but the nurture of the community of faith is designed to prepare us for our everlasting life with the Lord and with one another.