Christian community, like beauty, often presents itself in the intimate, the common, the close at hand. It comes to bud and flower in the simplest of places. Race by, and we miss it. Wait to see it in some idealized state, and we pass without knowing it is there.
…On the matter of Christian community, Jesus was direct and pointed: “Where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). These words clearly contain a counsel of simplicity. As Jesus’ followers, if we are to find true community with one another and with Him, then we should look not just to the massive throng or the dramatic moment. We should look as well to the simplest instance of one life brushing up against another. We should open ourselves to the small and intimate moments when persons draw together in their joys and in their needs.
If love flows among us, even briefly, God is there -- in [the frustrations of daily living], in places of staggering beauty, in the realms of darkest communal pain. If we find ourselves bound together even momentarily, God is present. We taste with our spirits the community God longs to build.
-- Stephen V. Doughty in an article called “Simple Place” in Weavings Journal, May/June 2003
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