The Safest Place on Earth by Larry Crabb

If you have caught a glimpse of what community could be and find yourself weeping over what community now is, God’s word to you is this:  “Be strong.  Don’t give up.  I am with you.  The glory of the spiritual community is being slowly revealed and will one day fill the heavens.  Never settle for less.”

If your heart cries out for an experience of Christ that changes the way you relate to others, the Spirit is carrying your groans to the throne room.  God’s answer may require that we patiently seek out a few people who are weeping over the present state of Christian community and will risk everything to see the glory revealed.  It may require that we disturb some parts of the evangelical establishment by not cooperating with their efforts to achieve less.

        
But it will certainly require that we remain involved with certain folks we’d prefer to avoid or permanently leave.  Getting along with fellow Starbucks lovers is easy.  Offering spiritual community to hard-to-enjoy relatives and friends is not.

        
In any serious attempt to build true community, we will wrestle with confusion, disappointment, and occasionally, excruciating agony of soul.  Those struggles will compel us to fix our eyes on unseen reality-the Spirit is at work, and to believe in a better day ahead-Christ is coming back.

        
Our journey together to God will bring us to a point where a choice among three options must be made.

            1. Go mad:  Keep trying to make present community completely satisfying.

           

            2. Back up:  The search for intimacy is too risky, too dangerous, with uncertain and meager rewards.  Find a comfortably safe distance from people, wrap yourselves in a Christian blanket, and live there, safe and smug.

            3.  Journey on:  Stay involved, not everywhere, with everyone, but somewhere, with a few.  Don’t give up on at least a couple of relationships.  Die every day to your demand for total fulfillment now, in anything.  Accept the ache in your soul as evidence of maturity, not neurosis.  Discover the spiritual passions beneath the ache that are strong enough to sustain you in forward movement and to keep heaven in sight.  If you put all your eggs in the basket of present community, even at its best, you will be of all men most miserable.  Freely lust after the day that is coming.  Let that hope keep you on course. 

          
Expect to discover the point of this life and to experience the spiritual joys available now, to get an unforgettable taste of Christ, to feel the Father’s arms around you, to feel the Spirit within you.