Community

Community, does it exist in this modern age?

I live in the suburbs of a small? but spread out city. I love my current location, but I would be willing to move to a big city in a heartbeat. When I go into the tiny town where my school is located, the sense of small town community is evident. Yet, the more I explore bigger towns and cities the more evident that community is going away.

In this day and age as a society, we are losing the effort to get to know your next door neighbor, the members of your church who aren’t in your “group” of friends, and the people who are around you on a daily basis, but don’t even know your name.

Over my holiday break I had the privilege to spend the afternoon at a dear friends house. Now this friend knows what it truly means to embrace, connect, and expand the community around her. When I arrived at the house I came to have coffee with this friend; something that’s not unusual for me to do. Over the course of the afternoon, others kept arriving to this home. If I counted right, at the peak of guests arriving, twenty people where at the home. People were just dropping by and they knew that they would be welcome.

As I reflect on my visit I wonder, what has happened to true community? Has society became so industrialized that we don’t try reaching out to others?

My answer to this are two simple words — “staying comfortable.” We create our little group of friends and get comfortable in it. They laugh with us in good times, and cry with us in hard time. Often times these people look like us, maybe have the same occupation, or religious beliefs. I mean this is great to a degree, however, when one tries to join your community, are you willing to let them in? If they don’t look like you or have the same social status. For anyone, this generally can be uncomfortable to do.

In the end, we are all the same. We are all human, we are all sinful, and we all have hidden stories that haven’t been told. Why do we not embrace each other as children of God? How are you going to make a difference to embrace those who are not in any community? Will you stay comfortable, or make a difference in another’s life?