Some people find a "community" in high school, some in college; but for me it was these last several years in Minneapolis post-college. I felt like I finally connected and had a circle (and circles) of people I belonged to. Not everyone being a close friend but a definite level of trust and recognition.
Anyway, now that we are here in Mankato I have realized that in some ways I had become comfortable in that community giving me my sense of self worth. Yes, I loved God within it and grew in my love for God and others because of it; but I also began to let it be a kind of idol that told me who I was. The truth is that only God can tell us who we are and He always does so in the most beautiful, startling and yet profoundly calming, way.
These thoughts also grow out of my reading Don Miller's book "Searching for God Knows What." He talks a lot about how we are wired to be in relationship. He even states that if aliens were visiting us the thing they would notice the most is how much we are constantly comparing ourselves to each other. We are wired to want affirmation. The reason this instinct (so to speak) is so strong is that we are designed to be in a relationship with God who tells us who we are. I think of facebook (and even this blog) where it has become the norm to constantly tell an audience what you are doing/thinking/feeling. It's so obvious that we want others to affirm us (notice how there is only a "like" button and not a "dislike" one on facebook).
Getting back to what I was talking about earlier, as I realized how I had grown to depend of community and I step away from it into a kind of "void" here in Mankato I feel again a little like I did in high school and parts of college. I am a maverick of sorts - not quite fitting in but able to roll with the punches with my few friends. I am proud and yet I know I need community just as much as I did before. Even more, I need God and thankfully the book "Searching for God Knows What" really hits on God's earnest desire for a relationship with us and has pulled me back in this direction. God's love is so out of control -- it's a sheer astonishment. We are sometimes caught in words and ideas of God rather than actually loving God for who He is. I have been refreshed by being called out to love Him and not just my imagination/a set of precepts. He is the Light and Water that can repair my roots and keep me like a tree by the waters.
"This is what the Lord says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who draws strength from mere flesh
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.
who draws strength from mere flesh
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.
7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”
whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”
Jeremiah 17:5-8
