Apartment Warming & Fellowship
Last month Toby and I visited my best friend's church for the first time, after promising to visit for about a year. What impressed me wasn't the huge building, the amazing band, or the Starbucks (a yummy frapp in church in heat of the South? Yessssss), but it was the overwhelming sense of community. It literally made my heart sing!
Fast forward a couple of weeks and my pastor delivers a message on fellowship (you can watch the sermon
). Think God is tying to tell me something?
THEN
announced that this month's
topic is, you guessed it, fellowship.
is a group I joined on Facebook for women who love Jesus and blogging, and who share ideas and encourage one another. Again, think God is trying to tell me something
?
For the past few weeks, I have just been desiring community and fellowship. When I close my eyes I can just see friends sitting on our couch with a cup of tea or coffee laughing, talking, and spilling their hearts out. I see families at our tiny dining room table breaking bread, sharing stories, and praying. I see game night being turned into bible study. THIS is what my heart longs for at the moment.
To be honest, I don't know the logistics of how this will pan out. I don't know whether this is supposed to happen where I am or not. All I know and can do is to be obedient to whatever God tells me.
One step in that direction was the apartment warming we had this weekend! We moved in about three months ago and thought it was definitely time to have other people over besides our immediate family! So I gave a few (more like 50) friends and family about a week and a half heads up on Facebook and then spendt the rest of that time pinning, prepping, and preparing (although I also should have been praying because this little lady worked herself into stress mode).
Saturday came so quickly, and before I knew it we had our first guests arrive as I was putting the finishing touches on everything. Once we began chatting and catching up with our friends, every ounce of trying to make a Pinterest worthy apartment went away. It was no longer about the plates being set up just right, or my desire to give life to our dead, bare walls. But it was about enjoying my friends and family. As I stood back and watched my guests laugh, eat, and shout over rounds of Taboo, I was at peace. My heart was happy! The three or four hours of jokes, advice, and creating memories made me realize that this is what makes the journey of life fun.
As my pastor said, there's "a oneness we feel when we are united together... Fellowship is not an activity, but a relationship and our activity is birthed out of our relationship." Preach, pastor!
I know that this is work,
especially during the summer where we go our separate ways to chase vacations, events, and beaches. But
whether we have a group of people at our place, I am meeting for a cold frapp with a girlfriend, or enjoying the blogging world community, I want to be intentional about making fellowship a priority.
Do I have any ladies who is desiring community and fellowship like me right now? How do you make it a priority, especially in the summer?