community

Read Act chapter 1 and Psalm chapter 1

So when they had come together Acts 1:6 In the congregation of the righteous. Psalm 1:5

“So, how’s everything out at the commune?” bellowed the man who came into my office at work. This man had once been a neighbor of ours. He had a dog that could climb a chain link fence to get out of his kennel so he could come over to our place. Whenever our neighbor came home, which wasn’t that often for he lived a full and perhaps too active life, he would come over to our place to find his dog.

If he saw one of us before he saw his dog, he would grumble, “How am I suppose to keep my dog at home when everyone over here gives him so much attention?”

We live at Story Book Lodge Christian Camp and it is not a commune. We each have our own homes and our own bank accounts. We generally only eat our meals together when we are eating them with 150 or so campers and camp staffers. We sort of live our own separated lives, but we sort of don’t.

The founding director of our camp had three children. They each took their own course in life. But two of the daughters are now at the retirement age and both of them have purchased homes adjacent to the camp to live with their husbands for the rest of their days. They both have enough money to retire well in Sun City, Arizona but they want to be back at camp where on March 20, 2013, the wind is howling and the snow is three feet deep and the temperature is 3 degrees above zero.

The first thing we read that God observed about the man He created was, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” Genesis 2:18. So God made him a helpmate, a partner.

In Ecclesiastes we read, “Two is better than one…for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.”

I like to be alone, at times. I think that is part of the reason I like to ride my bicycle so much. Every day when there is not snow and ice on the bike trail, I’m on the trail for an hour or two. Much to my satisfaction, I normally do not see another human being during this time. So I think my own thoughts and go my own way. But I always have a destination where I again will be back in the community of other people.

Daniel said in yesterday’s devotional that we need the society of other people to be as good as we ought to be. He said that by ourselves, we can rationalize poor behavior. I would take this a step farther. I believe that community makes us more human and thus community makes us more fully ourselves.

A dog just lying in its kennel is hardly a dog. He becomes a dog as he plays and barks, and imposes himself on you until you pet him.

Most everybody needs time alone. For many of us, alone time is our “God time,” like the Lord Jesus who would get up very early in the morning to fellowship with His Father.

All of us, just like a dog, need each other. What a pity it is when some, “forsake the assembling” of themselves together because of one reason or another. Hebrews 10:25