Thankful Thursday - Community

This month's Thankful Thursday hostess, Lynn at Spiritually Unequal Marriage, shares how she is thankful for the blogging community.

I'm thankful for community, too, both blogosphere and my church family.

In the blogosphere, I'm thankful for all the challenging articles I read. I'm thankful to find that I'm not alone - there are plenty of other moms who feel the way I do. There's all kind of godly advice in the blogs I frequent.

I'm also thankful for the readers who have dropped by my blog and listened to whatever I had to say. Thanks, too, to all those who have taken the time to comment. So far, I've not had any negative commenters!

I'm also grateful for the sense of community that my church home provides. I don't understand how those who do not belong to a church make it. Who do they share prayer requests with? Who prays with them at the altar? Who encourages them spiritually? Who notices when they are feeling down and comes along side to pray with them, or maybe just to give them a hug?

At my church, we are big on fellowship. The men have a monthly fellowship and so do the women. The church as a whole has a fellowship once a month. Our Sunday school classes are encouraged to have fellowships. This is so important because only in spending time together do we really share our lives. If I only glance at you across the aisle during worship, I might not notice that you are struggling with something. If I'm spending a half-hour with you in the fellowship hall chatting, I'm much more likely to pick up on the fact that you need some friendship.

I think there's no reason to stand alone when God has provided community for us:

"A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken." Ecclesiastes 4:12

No, my church family is not perfect and the blog world is not perfect. But working together, we can be an uplifting community.

To read other thankful hearts, visit Lynn at Spiritually Unequal Marriage.