Community: The Greatest Potential for Pain and Love
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
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In working on my study for tonight, it just hit me that community (or relationships) is the place where there is the greatest potential for pain and love. Only in community can you truly experience a broken heart. But only in community can someone love you exactly the way you are. This is why marriage is so wonderful, but divorce is so catastrophically painful. Only by allowing ourselves to be fully known by somebody else can we truly be loved. But when we risk that vulnerability with imperfect people, we will also experience pain. Michael Card wrote about Judas betraying Jesus, "Only a friend can betray a friend. A stranger has nothing to gain."
Hopefully, forgiveness is what keeps community together. Forgiveness flows from us to others as God's agape gets a firmer grip on our heart.
The pain of community is why some people make few friends or tend to be loners. The risk of love is too great. But it seems to me that all of life is a risk...why not risk your love for the sake of others. This is what God did. Sometimes, though, we take the easy way out and risk things like money. We don't mind gambling our money away, but when it comes to our heart, we simply will not risk.
The love in community is what makes single people try again even after they have been hurt by their last relationship.
The love in community keeps a married couple together for 50 years.
The love in community causes the divorced and the widowed to look for another relationship even after all that pain.
The love in community keeps me coming back again and again to Christ's church.
What pain keeps you from community? How does agape love always try and pull you back in? This love is from God. RISK IT!
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casey this is so true but it is so hard.
Like we talked about tonight, with the fear of rejection I think comes the reluctance for letting go to love someone with agape love.
Some times for me the fear of pain keeps me from tearing down the wall to love someone the way I would like to, especially when I know someone is going to leave me behind... I have a hard time letting go and letting them love me and me them.
I think it is something I definitely need to work on.
thanks for your thoughts
Casey,
Thanks for the things last night they mean so much to me. I just read your blog and think that it is so true and yet difficult. I know for personal experience that community can be good and bad at the same time. And I promise I will read the book b/4 the summer wears away too much. Its like an answer to my prayers.
In Christ,
Jackie
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