For Megan...and the rest of us, too :0)

The other night, Meg & I were talking about the importance of community.

I don't remember if I've told her this before, but the night before she began her second treatment, I was praying specifically for her, and also for a couple I know that had just lost their newborn daughter.

As I was praying, I was also meditating especially on Matthew 5:4 (Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.). First, I was thinking what the couple was mourning: the loss of a child, which represents their love, their future, their legacy.

I was thinking of Megan, how she had to have been mourning this loss of normalcy, loss of health, loss of control.

Then I began thinking about the community that surrounded both Meg and this couple, and was praising God for the awesome community of Believers that both the couple and Megan have surrounding them. Believers who love them and are lifting them up in prayer, constantly.

I’m not much of a concert person, but I was praying, I had this image of crowd surfing. When a person crowd surfs, he is passed hand by hand above a packed crowd, right? Hands are raised high above the air, and there is such a multitude of people that this is done so that the surfer is not dropped - many hands are holding him up, and so the burden of his weight, no matter how great or what he is carrying, is not too much for anyone to bear because they are all sharing the burden.

I thought that was a compelling picture of what the community of Believers is to look like... hands up - praising God and lifting those, literally carrying along those of us in need who aren’t able to stand on our own at that moment. And God, reaching down to touch us with His spirit, His joy, His peace. Not to mention His grace, His grace that empowers us to let others to pick us up because we can't stumble another step, and also the grace it takes to carry others in their times of need.

We all need that peace, that community, that supernatural strength in our lives. Tonight especially, I am so incredibly grateful for it.