Community.

I sit on my couch in the glow of the Christmas tree as snow falls silently outside, its a winter wonderland.  Outside my neighbor, Darnell shovels our sidewalk and I thank him with some hot cocoa.  My heart is so full in this moment that I must record and capture it as a reminder when things are hard and I just want to quit.  Life here is not always easy, the bullet hole through my mailbox can attest to the deep pain of our community.

Community, I pause when the word comes to my lips, I do not think I have ever understood what that word truly meant until I moved to West Garfield.  I look at my church family and my neighborhood and I see exactly what those words mean.  Community is my neighbor Dave calling us early in the morning after a snow storm to tell us he scraped off our cars.  It's my house full of children sitting with adults who put their life on pause for a couple hours a week to help the them with their homework.  Community is Mr. and Mrs. White, an older couple in our church, who challenged two young men that if they got all A's and B's on their report card they'll pay them $10, and when those young men followed through they lavished them in praise until their cheeks flushed pink.  Community is people coming together to drive Ms Elizabeth to and from her chemo treatments and gathering materials for smoothies because it is the only thing she's been able to keep down. It's Tanya watching a young moms baby so that she can work. It's Michael taking two boys home with him after church to get extra time with them. Community is Anj as she sits and listens, as though nothing else is more important in that moment, as I pour out my heart to her.  It's Michelle as she sets aside extra soap, socks, and gloves for a homeless man in our church family and watching him beam as he receives it.  Commmunity is my deeply loving roommates who happily welcome child after child after child into our home to spend the night.

I could go on and on of all the ways I have seen community lived out in my life and I must praise the Lord because it is through Him we have this.  He has called us into a family so much larger and so much more beautiful than just our biological families.  I believe with all of my heart that this is what He meant when he created the church.