Me: Prodigal, you are with a whole group today!
Prodigal: Yep, I am listening to them while they play Amazing Grace!
Me: Love that song!
Prodigal: They did a great job, but if you wanted to share we can take a break
Me: I wanted to share about community and something that was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“There arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be the greatest” (Luke 9:46). We know who it is that sows this thought in the Christian community. But perhaps we do not bear in mind enough that no Christian community ever comes together without this thought immediately emerging as a seed of discord. Thus at the very beginning of Christian fellowship there is engendered an invisible, often unconscious, life-and-death contest. “There arose a reasoning among them”: this is enough to destroy a fellowship.
Hence it is vitally necessary that every Christian community from the very outset face this dangerous enemy squarely, and eradicate it. There is not time to lose here, for from the first moment when a man meets another person he is looking for a strategic position he can assume and hold over against that person. There are strong persons and weak ones. If a man is not strong, he immediately claims the right of the weak as his own and uses it against the strong. There are gifted and un gifted persons, simple people and difficult people, devout and less devout, the sociable and the solitary. Does not the un gifted person have to take up a position just as well as the gifted person, the difficult one as well as the simple? And if I am not gifted, then perhaps I am devout anyhow; or if I am not devout it is only because I do not want to be. May not the sociable individual carry the field before him and put the timid, solitary man to shame? Then may not the solitary person become the undying enemy and ultimate vanquisher of his sociable adversary? Where is there a person who does not with instinctive sureness find the spot where he can stand and defend himself, but which he will never give up to another, for which he will fight with all the drive of his instinct of self-assertion?
All this can occur in the most polite of even pious environment. But the important thing is that a Christian community should know that somewhere in it there will certainly be “a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest.” It is the struggle of the natural man for self-justification. He finds it only in comparing himself with others, in condemning and judging others….
(When the Christian community eradicates this enemy,) strong and weak, wise and foolish, gifted or un gifted, pious or impious, the diverse individuals in the community, are no longer incentives for talking and judging and condemning, and thus excuses for self-justification. They are rather cause for rejoicing in one another and serving one another.
I am weak, therefore I look to Jesus
I have no gifts in the flesh therefore, I turn to Jesus
I am foolish in my plans, therefore, I turn to Jesus
Therefore Jesus turns to me and shows me what a gift you are in my life! How precious I am to have you!
Therefore Jesus turns to me and reminds me to serve you today and that I will try to do.
Matthew 5:41
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him two.
Jennifer Van Allen,
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
