Day 133: Building up a Community

 "Is anyone among you suffering?  Let him pray.  Is anyone cheerful?  Let him sing psalms.  Is anyone among you sick?  Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord."  James 5:13-14

I feel like this is something that we've distanced ourselves from in recent times.

We look at church like a place that exists far away from home that is only open on Sunday mornings.  It loses its spirituality over the week and becomes just a building.  We also become divorced from everybody at church once we leave on Sunday.  Yet, that's not what the point is.

When I read the above passage, I think about how important a church was to the community.  All of the activities that are listed above (and even after this passage) are things that we normally associate with church.  The thing is, though, that there isn't any fine print.  There's nothing that says, "If anyone is sick at church," or, "If anyone feels cheerful at church," or "If anyone is suffering at church."  It's plain and simple.  We are the church, and we take it everywhere we go.

The other side to consider is that we need to make sure the church is a community, not just a bank, where transactions happen between a teller and a customer.  Instead, we attend church as a community.  We should be willing to join hands in prayer and healing at any given moment.  We should feel as if the church is our second home, if not our fist.  We need to have camaraderie between all the members.  If there are issues, then we should make sure to go forward and solve them.  Rather than let evil break into our communities, dividing them and infecting every person, we should be guarding all the good that comes from our community.

Our faith is not something that we just say.  Anybody can crack open a prayer book or (in that case) look up the Creed page on Wikipedia and recite the words with no faith.  That's easy.  It's living our faith that we are called to do.  When we read the bible and learn what to do, we can build up our communities to become stronger.  It takes a great effort to build up a community, but when we do, it will benefit us, healing us, and celebrating with us.