Community Living- Someone’s Got to Teach Us!
What would it be like to really live without care of possessions, money, or status? I’m not really sure, but I know it is a beautiful thing.
It is almost painful to visit friends at the different leper colonies. Not because of deformaties, poverty, or the immense sorrow that ‘should’ exist in their lives, but because I know that they will be making me tea, and taking their last few Rupees to bye me a meal. How can I go into these places that in our mind need ‘fixed,’ and get served and treated better than I do in most Christian homes I visit?
In America we hold seminars and Wednesday night discussions on community living, and what it means or how we should incorporate it. However it goes no where! If we look over Acts 4: 32-37…. the early church felt that what they owned was not their own, and that they shared everything. No one among them was in need because they took care of each other. So, here we are 2,000 years later totally missing the concept, but having Hindu lepers living out Acts 4 community.
I have wrestled with these thoughts, and can not understand why I have not once been asked for money or food, but only served and been shown love! Why are we always so internally depressed and unhappy even though WE have the ‘Love’ of the eternal Father. Maybe we replace our reliance on the Love of the Father with possessions, money, and status. But who really should care about that? Timothy said, ” We brought nothing into this world, and can not take anything out!” So, thankyou Lepers for teaching me simplicity, community, service, and love.
WOW!!!!!!!!! at a lost for words….
Amen! Of all the people I’ve met in the world, I think the lepers have taught me the most about love and community.
Praying for you guys…