05.06 | This is Belonging
1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:13
‘Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.’
1 Thessalonians 3:11-13
There’s an advert used for the British army that’s now been around for a few years.1 It uses imagery of soldiers in various harsh environments—deserts and mud and conflict and debris—but with one line on all the images:
This is belonging.
It’s an incredible piece of marketing, because it digs beneath the discomfort of conflict to a deep and inherent desire of the soul: to relate. To connect. To be a part of a community that is deeply and relentlessly for each other. To suffer and travel and attain and grow together. It speaks to the heartfelt yearning for a measure of belonging that vastly exceeds every wimpish and watery pretence of community, sparkling Instagram smiles hiding hearts screaming for connection, in the digital age of the individual.
There’s a feature of Paul’s tone to the Thessalonians that catches the reader.
It is so loving. Paul just so deeply loves these guys. He cares, he views them as his family, he longs for their wellbeing and would give up anything for their thriving. In the midst of all that they are going through in Thessalonica (which was likely significant persecution) and all that Paul has been through in his travels, they both know pain and obstacles and opposition. And yet, they also know the beauty of togetherness, that stands shoulder-to-shoulder in the face of pain, and keeps going.
They know hardship. And they know belonging.
It’s a guarantee that our lives will have pain. Jesus does bring such beauty and joy and life and healing, but we also live out our lives in the face of the opposing forces of death and hell and the broken desires of our own sinful and wounded souls. It’s a battlefield out there. It’s hard. Jesus said it would be.2
And yet, we also face a very real danger.
That we suffer alone.
Let Paul offer us another option.
That it is possible to be opposed and persecuted, struggling and suffering, grieving and bruised, and yet also to be thoroughly loved and perfectly held. That tears and love can happen in the same place. And that their depth of community—that rejoiced and wept and advance and bled together—grew roots and flourished and brought comfort through the soil of their walking through struggle together.
We need this. We need it when we think a good Christian is always happy and nice. We need it when we think the required answer for questions about our wellbeing is ‘great’. We need it when we think the path to stronger community is denial of struggle rather than talking honestly about it. We need it when we rush to try and fix the problems of our peers rather than simply feeling them together. We need it when we think we can increase joy by denying grief, rather than realising that the truest joy and truest hope and truest love grow out of communities that have learned to walk the stuff of suffering together. Here we find the extraordinary joy and remarkable strength of true community.
Here we find belonging.
Reflect:
Where are you struggling alone right now?
What friendships need nurtured to learn to walk together through this?
Pray:
Father in heaven,
I’ve got a whole bank of excuses
Of why I should do all this alone.
I tell them to myself frequently.
And yet, Father,
I struggle.
I get tired and insecure,
Weak and wobbly,
And I’m so tired of holding it all together.
But Father, I want so deeply,
This vision of life that really does know
Belonging.
And so,
Help me towards this.
Lead me to those I can walk more deeply with;
Grant me the courage of honesty,
Help me to feel before I try to fix,
To listen without needing to solve,
And to speak without needing to pretend.
Teach me to order my time and life,
That people become greater to me than tasks.
And Father, may this be, so that
At the end of my days,
It may be said that I journeyed
With richness of community,
Shoulder to shoulder.
In a cause worth fighting for,
Walking with the eternal joy
Of heavenly love.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
2 Kings 3:1-4:37 | Psalm 72:1-14
To my memory, I first saw it on a bus shelter near our house in 2017
John 16:33