What Community? What Perspective? ...

Monday, Nov 11, 2013. We are all part of a particular community. This is true for our professional life - for either education or work. It is also true for our friends and family. And it is true with respect to our hobbies.

What is our horizon? …

Each community we belong to provides some horizon to our life. It gives us a framework for our mind, for thoughts and for emotions. For example: I have been involved strongly in classical music when I was a teenager. It was a time of playing with several different orchestras - state youth orchestra, state youth chamber orchestra. It was a time with concerts in several European countries, in Portugal, in France, in Germany, in Poland and Hungary. The horizon for me at that time was, at least to a good part, a particular part of the musical world.

This horizon was not just the beauty of music. This beauty was a part of it. But it was also strongly the competition between young gifted musicians. It was the competition of people studying music at particular schools in Cologne and other well-known conservatories in the country. It was the competition of those trying to get into the federal youth orchestra, with only 10 selected young people per instrument group, chosen from the whole country. The horizon was a particular thin layer of young people.

Each community we belong to has this particular horizon. It has its own and special criteria, what is good. It has its criteria what it asks its member to do. And usually there are some ressources for this community, which are shared and distributed according to success and failure.

The situation is quite similar when you look into other communities - for example into some physical research area, or into some medical community, or into some art community, painting or plastic art. We tend to build communities, and then we tend to live in it. It is the structure of our mind and our heart, to behave according to the particular horizon of our community. It guides what we want and what we do.

Biblical Perspective …

The bible invites us into another community. It is not of the same type as all the human work-type communities. It is not the same. It has different features. And it is much more universal that any of the particular professional communities or leisure related communities we might become a part of.

We are invited to join the community of Christ Jesus. It is the community of the eternal God, the community of the Lord. We become a member of it not by training, not by particular gifts, not by achievement. We become a member of it by faith in Christ Jesus only. The bible promises the Holy Spirit to those, who give their life to him, who open their heart and their mind for God, who sincerely ask and approach him. We are invited into eternal community, right here and now.

The horizon, which is given to us by the Lord, is much wider, much deeper, much higher, than the perspective of any particular work-related community. God is the creator, it is just not comparable at all. He knows every human. He has been there before time. He will be, he is the first and the last. And with him, we learn another framework of life - linked to words like truth, love, forgiveness, grace, peace, friendliness. His invitation is to develop, and to live in him, in faith and through faith. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts