Pilgrim Soldier

Yesterday I made a comment on a blog and said this:

… it is possible to be looking into the distance for something that is in reality not that far from what we already have! Change is so difficult but we need to remember to reflect [...] community to others within our own community of believers rather than seeking it outside and leaving others behind!”

Then last night I read the following in The Irresistible Revolution:

There is a brilliant truth that I have come to see, largely because of Dietrich Bonhoeffer [...] whose words are now inscribed on my wall: “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community [even if their intentions are ever so earnest], but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

I know I sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that the grass is always greener on the other side, especially when I am frustrated by church/work in some way. But the reality is that whilst we can learn from other expressions of church than our own, God has placed us in the community that we are in for a reason. If we believe that God’s plan for the world is based within the Church and that in order to fulfill that plan then we must be community minded, then we need to start loving the people that God has placed us with. We need to stop looking longingly for a community model that we can attach ourselves to, and instead commit ourselves to building it in the place God has put us.