Homecoming Community...

The last week has begun.  A group of us gather together here once a week.  We meet together in a home.  We break bread together, we sing praises together, we enjoy each others presence, we pray together, we discuss scripture together.  Last night was my last.  It will be tough to transition to a different model in the States.  I grew up in the traditional western church model.  It is responsible for my roots.  It is responsible for helping me get where I am today.  But it will be hard to go back to it.  

When I read Acts, I see the church of Jesus’ followers.  They met in homes.  They shared meals.  They shared life.  They worshipped together and played together.  They laughed and cried together.  They lived the life of Christ together.  Seems we’ve lost some of that in the west.  It makes me sad that those who don’t follow the master seem to understand his ideas of community better than those of us who do follow him.

I watch shows like “Friends.”  Sure, there is evidence of a life motivated by something other than Christ.  But they loved one another the way Christians are called to love people.  I’ve become a big fan of the movie version of the musical “Rent.”  A Christian magazine I like slammed it.  They felt it “promoted homosexuality.”  In my opinion it didn’t.  It showed it as a real thing that happens in our world.  I’d like to see believers come to a place of knowing how to love the gay community the way Christ would.  There is a scene in the movie at a cemetery.  It touches me.  I watch how this group lives family.  They love one another, through thick and thin.  They hurt when they have to be away from one another.  They rejoice at chances to be together.

As the States move closer and closer to my reality I long to find community like this.  I had it once.  I still have those guys; we just live in different places now.  Two are in Thailand, two are in Baltimore, two are in Tennessee, and who knows where I’ll be (or when I’ll find the other half of my pair!).  I enter the States differently than ever before.  I won’t be with my best friends.  I won’t be with my parents.  My sister is gone.  I enter a changed person.  Those most responsible for participating in my changing won’t be around me.  It will be a stretch.  I’ll have to learn again how to live life.  But it is all part of the journey.  And oh how I love the journey.