Community

Last summer I was waiting in the car to drive my husband home after he left our other car at the repair shop.  I happened to be parked outside a tobacco store, the kind of little specialty shop that sells cigars and pipe tobacco.  

As I idly watched men go in and out of the shop, different ages, different races, greeting each other with back slaps and handshakes, I was struck with how these men, sharing a common interest, had formed their own community.

Since that day, months ago, I have been obsessed with the idea of community.  I realized how much we all seek community.  We seek to belong somewhere.

I started musing about different types of communities.  Gang members form their own communities.  Not based on values or standards that most of us agree with, but they are looking for a place where they can be accepted.

Churches, civic groups, interest groups like hiking clubs and knitting groups, motor cycle clubs, sports teams, volunteer organizations and families, are all different types of communities.

There is even the 21st century world of online communities.  Groups of people who will  probably never be in the same room at the same time, but join together from around the globe to discuss the thing that draws them to each other.


Why is community so important to us?  Belonging.  It is essential to our souls to belong.  We crave love and acceptance.  We want to be wanted.


I keep coming across the concept of community.  Almost every day I hear or read about someone else talking about community.  Somehow I know I'm not finished contemplating community, what it means to me and what it means to others.  
As my last year homeschooling speeds toward its conclusion, there is a new transition in my life. I find myself looking for a new community.  For 17 years I've been deeply woven into the fabric of the homeschool community and I identity so closely with homeschoolers that I am feeling community-less.
What will be my new community or communities? 
I don't know where it will all lead but the Lord has planted the idea of community into my brain and it just doesn't want to leave.  So I know there's more for me to learn.