community Archives - Invitations to Ascend

August 24, 2020September 18, 2020

Belonging part 3 – fractured, fragmented and ineffective?

This morning I was reading Jesus’ prayer for his disciples in John chapter 17. It has taken me a long time to read this chapter. I have been here for weeks. It has been strange for nothing has genuinely struck me and yet I have felt unable to go on. Perhaps that is because I would prefer not to read what happens next? But I suspect that more has been at play.

As the third post in this series on belonging; I hope to bring something further to what we have previously discussed. In the first post, we discussed the yearning to belong, the need to truly meet with others and to prioritise the other in social situations. And Marion so beautifully developed this further here when she wrote about the need to recognise the truth that we do belong – to God, and to others because we belong to him.

July 10, 2020September 18, 2020

The lenses that we look through

A year or two ago, I listened to a sermon in which the way we see God was discussed. To be fair, I am not even sure if that was the main point of the message, but it struck me and stuck with me. The lens through which we see God clearly has profound ramifications. For it determines how we relate to Him, and also to others.

But what occurred to me then, and has sat with me ever since, is that identifying this lens is undoubtedly both challenging and complicated. For we see God through our eyes, our experience, prejudices, preconceptions, through what others have told us, what we have read and heard. Beyond doubt, all these things colour our perceptions. While we will never see perfectly, this is something we must be aware of, and seek, wherever possible, to overcome. For if we fail to do so, we may end up following a God who is not.

June 27, 2020September 18, 2020

Belonging

I love that word. It has the deep sense of home, of warmth, of togetherness. Being in a place and fitting in, somewhere which is mine. But not just mine for in this place there are others to whom it belongs as much as myself. This, I think, is a much better word than community. For we each live within communities that for the most part are dislocated, fractured, and separate – the very antithesis of belonging.

I have often felt like somehow I don’t fit. There are times when I stand in a group of people and feel foreign, strange and disconnected. It as if somehow everyone else shares a secret that I don’t know. That they all stand on common ground, but there is no room for me.