community on Envy

May we be no one’s enemy, and may we be the friend of all that is eternal and abides with Christ. May we never quarrel with those nearest us; and if we do, may we be reconciled quickly. May we love,...

Free us, Lord, from our obsession with ourselves long enough to care for others; to be so concerned about the well-being of the human community that me don’t have to worry about our place, our church,...

Our bond, which you resent, consists in mutual love, for we know not how to hate; we call ourselves ‘brethren’ to which you object, as members of one family in God, as partners in one faith, as joint ...

I have always wanted to be me without making it difficult for you to be you.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives.

He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door.

Holy and merciful God, we confess to you and to one another, and in the company of the communion of saints, that we have sinned by our own fault, in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and ...

The soul selects her own society, Then shuts the door; On her divine majority, Obtrude no more.

I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set b...

A simple refusal motivates my argument: refusal to believe that the present time and place, and the people who are here with us, are somehow not enough. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act li...

The ancient Greek word for intimate fellowship is koinonia. In the church, we can suffer from what might be called koinonitus: fellowship turned in on itself; cliques and enclaves and tight-knit group...

Have people in your life that will chase you and come after you with love when you are struggling or not at your best.

Simply Seek happiness, and you are not likely to find it. Seek to create and love without regard to your happiness, and you will likely be happy much of the time. Seeking joy in and of itself will not...

Gracious and loving God, you invite us to the table, yet we resist your grace. It is sometimes easier to float around outside of the Christian community than it is to invest fully in it. You invite ot...

The vision that Jesus gives us is this: That I am unconditionally loved, that I belong to God, and that I am a person who can really trust that. When I meet another person who also is rooted in the he...

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have r...

“Christianity promises to make man free,” Anglican priest William R. Inge writes; “it never promises to make them independent.” Freedom and independence are polar opposites. The former leads to wellne...

Gracious God, you call us to a life of intimate relationship with you and with one another. You call us to a life of community, where we actively seek the needs of others before our own. We acknowledg...

The problem is not recognizing the importance of the individual. The problem is the glorification of the individual. When the individual self is glorified over the greater good of the community, right...

Better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. Almighty God, we are sorry for the times we’ve failed to help others experience the goodness of your presence. For the times we’ve intentiona...

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners.

If our goods are not available to the community, they are stolen goods.

Shalom envisions the full prosperity of a people of God living under the covenant of God’s demanding care and compassionate rule. In the prophetic vision, peace such as this comes hand in hand with ju...

Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart [and especially the hearts of the people of this land], that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappea...

Recently I’ve wondered about the connection between the English words “longing” and “belonging”. Isn’t belonging one of our greatest longings in life? Don’t we all have some deep, inner desire t...

Solitude... keeps us from making judgments about other people’s sins. In this way real forgiveness becomes possible. The following desert story offers a good illustration: A brother . . . committed...