Want this.
So my friend Doug Shell spoke at D'Vine last week (he was incredible) and I am currently obsessed with this quote. I think that Donald Miller describes community and communion like this in Blue Like Jazz and I was obsessed in college...and this picture has entered back into my mind...I love true community.
... Jesus, having symbolically overturned the whole social order, gave us a new social order through the last supper, in the symbolic form of communion.
Through Jesus, the early Christians discovered the secret of community. We know well from the history of the early church that this is so. But since we ourselves have mostly lost the secret, we do not realize the power that it once had... Generally, they did not have to lift a finger to evangelize. Someone would be walking down a back alley in Corinth or Ephesus and would see a group of people sitting together talking about the strangest things- something about a man and a tree and an empty tomb. What they were talking about made no sense to an onlooker. but there was something about the way they spoke to one another, about the way they cried together, the way they touched one another that was strangely appealing. It gave off the scent of love. The onlooker would start to drift farther down the alley, only to be pulled back to this little group like a bee to a flower.
Im not saying that I feel like its not important to "evangelize" - whatever that means for you...I'm just loving the picture of people being so drawn to a group of people and the way that they love each other that they can't help but want to be a part of what makes it so great.
So in saying that, I need to say that I am SO thankful for all the amazing people in my life and for how they have shown me Jesus on a daily basis...how they have loved me into loving him more...how they have made it so that our relationship is strangely appealing and that people want in on our secret...love you
... Jesus, having symbolically overturned the whole social order, gave us a new social order through the last supper, in the symbolic form of communion.
Through Jesus, the early Christians discovered the secret of community. We know well from the history of the early church that this is so. But since we ourselves have mostly lost the secret, we do not realize the power that it once had... Generally, they did not have to lift a finger to evangelize. Someone would be walking down a back alley in Corinth or Ephesus and would see a group of people sitting together talking about the strangest things- something about a man and a tree and an empty tomb. What they were talking about made no sense to an onlooker. but there was something about the way they spoke to one another, about the way they cried together, the way they touched one another that was strangely appealing. It gave off the scent of love. The onlooker would start to drift farther down the alley, only to be pulled back to this little group like a bee to a flower.
Im not saying that I feel like its not important to "evangelize" - whatever that means for you...I'm just loving the picture of people being so drawn to a group of people and the way that they love each other that they can't help but want to be a part of what makes it so great.
So in saying that, I need to say that I am SO thankful for all the amazing people in my life and for how they have shown me Jesus on a daily basis...how they have loved me into loving him more...how they have made it so that our relationship is strangely appealing and that people want in on our secret...love you
posted by jmjana @ 9:16 AM
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