read this

this was posted by someone on staff at resonate.... and what can i say... it resonated with me :)

committed

Last week in HouseGroups, we read the last story in God’s great saga! It was called Epilogue: The Church.

It was about how Jesus’ death was the start of something new… and that something came to be called the Church. It was a new way of living. The story describes the people as being deeply committed to God and to each other. They shared everything they had. They spent their time praying, learning God’s ways together, and helping anyone who was in need. And they did all of this “with great joy and generosity,” the story says.

These are the rhythms that marked the life of the early Church. This is how people who were directly impacted by Jesus chose to live. I often think about the way the first Christians were committed to each other. What does that even mean? Besides the idea of marriage, it’s hard for me to formulate a picture of what people committed to each other looks like. That’s weird, right? Isn’t the normal thing for us to be committed to our families and spouses?

Which leads me to another question: did Jesus really come to make us a new family, or didn’t he? Does Jesus still call us to define “family” along the same lines that we knew growing up? Or does Jesus call us to a new definition? One that includes more than the people we’re related to or have created children with?

After all, blood is what defines our standard concept of what family is. And because Jesus poured out his blood, and we can partake of it every week (in communion), and everyday as we choose to live the kind of life that he did. Partaking of Jesus’ blood gains us entrance into this new family, where no one is left out. The whole family celebrates, suffers, and practices faithfulness to God and his ways together. And we are all committed to each other with a love that promises to remain in relationship, to struggle through conflict, and to share with the other their joys and sorrows.

Together we can represent a whole picture of the Kingdom of God. Together we can remain the bride of Christ, living like our husband has come back already. With the way we treat one another, we beckon others into this joyful, cross-carrying period of waiting as we try to follow Jesus and show the world what love looks like.