Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Through Prayer God Calls Us to Community

Groundbreaking for our Education Building

When I go alone to meet with God and pray one of the things that happens is that God gives me a heart for others. Even for my enemies. God reminds me of people I don't love, and calls me to love them as he does. Sometimes I want to escape these thoughts, but God will not let me.

In other words, God calls me to community, not away from it. Henri Nouwen writes that "It is precisely in communion with God through prayer that we discover the call to community." (Nouwen, A Spirituality of Living, p. 20)

This is hard for me because, as Parker Palmer wrote, community is the "place where the person you least want to live with always lives." (In Ib.) Nouwen comments on this and says "That person is always in our community somewhere. In the eyes of others, we might be that person." (Ib.)