(continued from part 1)
After wrestling through all of these thoughts and feeling insanely anxious, Saturday was an overwhelming day. Each time the door bell rang, the more I felt God showing love to me through His people. My emotions were all over the place that day. I felt feelings of guilt for getting something I did not deserve. I felt extreme emotions of hopefulness and gratitude. At times I couldn’t even respond and I would just laugh at how insane this was to have people coming up to us and caring enough to pass along envelops of money. After a while some of the neighbors started coming over and giving us money. The very people who we first came into the neighborhood to “serve” were coming over to drop off envelopes to us. These were people whose legal status were in question, people who worked part time jobs, people who get stuck with adjectives like “poor” and “underprivileged”. These are individuals who are treated as if they don’t exist because they are “illegal.” These were the people, our friends, who were giving to us. If this is not the perfect expression of church, I don’t know what is.
The Kingdom of God has always been an upside down Kingdom. Jesus always said the first shall be last. Blessed are the poor, the weak, and the least. And for this season of my life, these words have never made more sense. At Solidarity we continually try to live and see the world as Jesus did. And last Saturday, every time that doorbell rang and we saw another individual standing at our doorstep with a sheepish grin and an envelope in hand, we were reminded of how Jesus called us to live. This is what Community is. There is no hierarchy. There is no class nor are people considered less than another. Community is being with people who constantly choose to die to themselves for the sake of another. That’s what God intended His church to be. This is the way Jesus asked His people to live. I had a small taste of what that tangibly looks like and for the first time I feel like I got to experience real community.
join the conversation, be the first to comment.