Doing life together

It's been a while since I last wrote-- I took a couple of weeks off of work to take part in the wedding of two friends in California, as well as to spend some sweet time in fellowship with friends there, in Oregon, and in Washington. What a blessing! I am (now that I have caught up on the sleep I did not get while traveling) refreshed and rejuvenated, encouraged and joyful. I have been blessed with wonderful friends. It's hard to remember this sometimes, as it's been a while since I had the opportunity to live near any of them, but I do have really wonderful friends.

I hadn't realized how much I had felt the lack of peer fellowship this winter until I was surrounded by an abundance of it again. It makes sense, though-- we're created to be in fellowship and to do life together. I pray for an opportunity to live this way again soon. For now, I'm thankful for the time I got and the encouragement it gave me to continue on.

How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! Psalm 133:1

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17

Let us not give up meeting together... but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching. Hebrews 10:25

Fellowship

I spent most of the day today at a worship retreat for church. Most people on the worship team are people I know, but none of them are people I know particularly well. Six hours of meetings (sandwiched between four hours of meetings for something else) could have been a very long day. Instead, I came out of it refreshed and amazed again at the depth of fellowship to be found within the community of believers, regardless of any outside factors.

"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." (1 John 1:7)

There are no prerequisites for deep bonds of brotherhood within Christian community. Jesus is everything, the best and deepest of bonds, and if we are found in Him we are found side by side with one another.

Hiatus

One of the beautiful things about the Kingdom of God is the closeness felt by fellow believers regardless of distance, time spent apart, or even never having met one another. I experienced some of this a few weeks ago when I went to North Carolina to visit friends of a friend and spent four days enjoying deep fellowship and great conversation. I'll be spending the next few weeks enjoying much more of this, as I spend time with a dear sister in the Lord that I haven't seen since we served together in Costa Rica three years ago and then travel to Europe to see one of my very dearest friends (after a year and a half of separation) and spend time in fellowship with him and other members of the body in Belgium and Germany.

I'm incredibly excited for both of these opportunities, and I cannot wait to see the sweet times the Lord will bring in these coming weeks. That said, I'm also a firm believer in being where you are and not tied to where you are not, and I will be leaving my computer behind. I aim to continue these reflections when I return, and I hope that some of you will continue to be blessed by them then.