Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.
Interpretation
A Christian community fosters hope and nurtures it to strengthen faith among its members.
Henri Nouwen emphasizes the importance of community in fostering and sustaining hope within a Christian context. He suggests that when individuals come together, they can collectively nurture and strengthen their hope, ensuring that it not only remains alive but also flourishes. This shared responsibility highlights the value of communal support in spiritual growth.
In practice
During a church meeting, we reflected on the significance of hope within our community.
The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.
The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides in the immense sorrow that has gone before....our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering β for us. And calling us to share in Godβs suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour.
Each of us must rededicate ourselves to serving the common good. We are a community. Our individual Fates are linked; our futures intertwined; and if we act in that knowledge and in that spirit together, as the Bible says: "We can move mountains."
We see community organizations as major service providers and economic drivers rather than as recipients or distributors of charity, and coordinators of volunteers. Today they constitute what's referred to as 'the social economy'.
As a community, we create a lot of space for fighting and pushing back, but not enough for connecting and healing.
As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.
Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers.
Where there is not community, trust, respect, ethical behavior are difficult for the young to learn and for the old to maintain.
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