Daily Delight

Sep 6

The connections created in authentic Jesus community will surround you in presence, show up in love and become family. My pastor once said, “It's in the context of family that we experience the texture of God's Kingdom.”

There’s a reason our walk with God is illuminated when we do it with others. Conversations had over coffee, filling up a living room with laughter and tears, singing at the top of your lungs on road trips and pausing life to be there for a grieving brother or sister; these moments become a lamp set on a hill, a light in the world (Matthew 5:14). Living with your palms turned up, open to receive and give, this posture of openness says, “come matter here.” This is the posture of community. One of the most gut-wrenching, if not hardest consequences from my decision to move cities, was leaving my community. When I left familiar relationships in Georgia to move to Washington D.C., I didn’t realize the fellowship I had would follow me, encourage me from afar, and ignite in me the desire to create new connections. They taught me to invest in community wherever you find yourself, because you are directly investing in the Kingdom of God.

When I moved to D.C., I joined a church plant called Grace Capital City. This community has become family. We carry each other and speak truth in love. “...Speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ” (Ephesians 4:15 NIV)

One day a friend spoke the truth in love, “sometimes you just need someone to say, “I see you.”

God will use community to remind us that just as we are seen by family, we are deeply seen, known and loved by Him. In community full permission is granted to feel how you need to feel. Permission to be seen where you are instead of where the world tells you should or need to be. Community is the sacred space that reminds you, “you are seen, you belong here.”

@victorialemosphotography

Amy Werner

Amy grew up near the mouth of the Appalachian trail in a northeastern town in Georgia. She now lives as a writer and science nerd in our nation’s capital, navigating life as a 20-something obsessed with finding sanctuaries in nature on the edges of the urban hustle of D.C. This new transition to D.C. has been a season of learning a posture of surrender and peaceful silence found with God even amid the noise of cultural expectations and standards. Amy is passionate about seeking justice, finding faith in all of life's details and championing young women to see and appreciate their divine value and worth. Amy loves stories, campfires, donuts and strong friendships, often the combination of all these elements equals her happy place.