After a crazy week of settling back in both dorm room and classroom, today turned out to be a more wonderful end to the week than I had hoped it to be. It was cold, and windy...but I love the cold (you have no idea). Besides, it was the good type of cold, the brisk type that makes you appreciate even a mediocre a cup of hot chocolate even more and actually look forward to going back to the sauna that passes for your dorm room. I got to do something I have been looking forward to since I got accepted to VT...I had to break out the long-johns. Words cannot express how much I love being back in a place where people actually know what long-johns are, let alone have the opportunity to wear them. Even what I thought was going to be the low point of the day (my four hour, Friday afternoon, lab) turned out to be a good thing. While I still think Friday afternoon labs should be banned, I am actually looking forward to the class, it's something I know I am going to enjoy: Wildlife Field Biology.
The absolute best part of the day, though--and my reason for this post--was the Nav bonfire. I love a good fire, I love 'smores, and I love being outside. Most of all, I love the fellowship. Every time we get together, I am reminded of exactly how much I am blessed just to be able to spend time with a group of committed Christians. It's sad how many Christians just don't understand the importance and benefits of fellowship.
I met a man, Rodrigo, in Costa Rica last summer who didn't think fellowship was that important. He told me that he has been a Christian for nine years but he hadn't really been going to church or getting together with other believers because he wasn't really comfortable around them. Apparently, as he explained, those he came in contact with were too "fanatical" for his taste. (That is another post altogether.) As we talked, Rodrigo asked me to pray for him, specifically that his faith would stay strong. Rodrigo was just finishing his degree in psychology and starting to teach some undergraduate classes at the local university and his beliefs were being challenged daily by peers and students alike. Most of the people that he came in contact with looked at Christianity as theory or fantasy and felt that true intellectuals had no need for such nonsense. Rodrigo didn't have a base to strengthen him. He didn't have a church family to give him the encouragement that he so desperately needed. Without any support coming in, Rodrigo was being spiritually drained.
We have all been guilty of neglecting what should be one of our most powerful assets. I had spent the majority of my church-life not quite being part of the church family. Other than names and faces, I knew only a handful of people at church--and the majority of them through my parents. Every Sunday, we file in, sit next to people we hardly know, and have little contact with anyone save a handshake every so often. Conversations seldom go further than "How are you?" to which nearly every person responds "Good" (or some such variation) no matter how far that may be from the truth.
Since when did Christianity become a private enterprise? Yes, our relationship with God is a personal relationship, and nobody will ever know us as well as God (not even ourselves), but private?
Did Paul keep his walk a private affair? Certainly not. He wrote continually about all that God had done in him, the greatest of sinners. When the Philippians showed concern for Paul, did he shun their attempts at sympathy? No. In fact, he commends them saying: "Nevertheless, you have done well to share with me in my affliction" (Philippians 4:14). And he write this after just having declared: "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13). God is the source of all strength, but we are still called to "bear one another's burdens" (Galatians 6:2).
How can we "bear one another's burdens" if we refuse to share with people what our burdens are? How can we encourage each other if we don't spend time together? Whose opinion would you value more: a stranger on the bus or your closest friend? "[Let] us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near" (Hebrews 10:24-25).
When we draw together in fellowship, we come together in God's presence and what greater place is there to be? Fellowship is a harbor, a source of encouragement, a time to heal, a place to be girded up so that we can go back out into battle refreshed.
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