After sitting through the Sunday School class on parenting this past spring, Anna Grace and I have had our fair share of parenting conversations lately. One helpful concept from that class is the realization that our approach to parenting has to shift over the course of a child’s life. The issues a parent is facing with a six-year-old are different from those of a sixteen-year-old (or at least they should be). In our current stage of parenting one of the issues that comes up for us often is SHARING. And I think this is pretty universal. Kids generally just struggle to share, and yet we adults struggle with it as well, perhaps more than we realize.

A few weeks ago I referenced 1 Thessalonians 2:8 in a sermon, in which Paul tells the church at Thessalonica: “We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too.” Notice Paul’s two-fold reference here to sharing: first, we are to share the good news about Christ; second, we are to share our lives with each other. In other words, part of what it means to be the church is to be aware of and active in what is going on in the lives of others. We are not intended to merely show up on Sunday mornings and then go about our business the rest of the week. We are not just intended to be worshipers, but worshipers IN COMMUNITY.

Last month I had a two week stretch where I officiated a funeral, held a new baby, attended a goodbye party for students who graduated, and completed my last premarital counseling session for a couple whose wedding I will perform this summer. All of these are obviously major life events, and I was reminded that, in our congregation, life is happening all the time. Some are having good weeks and others bad weeks, some grieving and others celebrating, some who are excited and some who are tired, some who can’t wait for the future and some who are dreading it. And we are meant to SHARE these experiences with one another. As Paul says in Romans 12, we are to rejoice with those who are rejoicing and weep with those who are weeping.

Do you share your life with others? Are you proactive to check in with folks in your shepherding group just to see how things are going with them? In order for us to truly be a church who is “in community” we must learn to share, not only in our belief in the gospel, but in the trenches of our day-to-day lives.

Ben