Loving Well

There are often times when you evaluate things in life and the negative is pointed out. Generally it is a means of improving what is going on. At least, that is how it works for me. I critically evaluate aspects of my life or activities I have planned or communities I am involved with to see how I/we can become better. For me, church is just no different. Lately I have been in constant thought about how we could do things better at our church. I have a big heart for evangelism and for community within our church. I actually recently took a survey evaluating how our church does with reaching people in our community (the actual community not within the confines of church) and sharing Gods love with them and it discouraged me a bit. I will preface this by saying, I am VERY critical because I really want to be doing two things in my church... period. Loving God and loving others. Really, that is what life is about. So when I saw that we weren't where I thought we should be in this area, I was a bit upset. I know I go to a small church and this is something that takes time to build and I am enjoying the challenge of helping to build it but... it just seemed so hard and I was down about it.

But this week, my heart changed from overly critical to brilliantly thankful. You see, I go to a church that loves one another very well. We go through pain together very well. We pray for one another very well. We help one another... very very well. And while there are things that need to get better for us, we definitely have this loving one another down. I have had meals brought to me and friends stay with me (one of my friends literally sat with me and let me cry all day cause she is cool like that ;)) and ladies pray for me and pastors talk to me and people babysit for us (yielding 11 straight hours of sleep for a baby that rarely sleeps more than 4 hrs at a time... I have no clue what or how she did it but I thank her) and I have been a part of that with so many of my dear church family. And while I realize that we have work in some areas in our church... something Francis Chan said on a video yesterday sticks out. We do want to fall hard in Love with Jesus and to show that Love to others' but God calls us to do that within a community. I am so thankful I am part of a community that loves one another very well. It has been an encouragement to me this weekend.