Relationships

The whole of the Christian gospel is centred on relationships.
How we treat our neighbour says everything about how we treat God.
We are obliged to two commandments which are inseparable from each other.
We are to love God and
We are to love our neighbour as ourselves.

If we can walk past a person in need without offering help
then our entire confession of love for God is suspect.
But love we know, without exception,
starts small and grows bigger.
It must be exercised.
The will to love must see its way into action.
Love grows with action.

In this we must first be tested:
We must learn to forgive
We must learn to be forgiven.
On this, the entire blessing of the Lord's prayer rests.
It is for this ministry alone that God gives us his Holy Spirit -
that we forgive and are forgiven by one another.

There is not a Christian commandment - to pray, to give, to worship, to forbear
to endure, to care for, to provoke, to gain, to lose
that does not involve relationship.
Relationship with God.
Relationship with each other.

The great diagnosis of our condition from the Scriptures is:
'You can't do this on your own.'
The great remedy of the Scriptures is:
'You are not alone, God loves you' -
the experience of which
is Christian fellowship.
To be faithful to God
to participate in his remedy
God gives us community.

Community among people who know themselves to be flawed.
Community among people who hunger to be accepted as they are.
Community among people who will carry one another in their thoughts
and by extension in their prayers.
Community among people who confess their sins to find healing and forgiveness.
Community among people with whom, when courage and liberty allow,
I too would confess and find healing and forgiveness.

I expect that in Christian community
I will become in word and action what I profess to be:
A Christian, a Christ one
to walk as Jesus walked
To live as he lived
and lives
in community.