Dear Friends & Family
Welcome back after the holiday break! May the Lord bless you and yours during this new year, may “the good hand of your God be upon you” for good, and may He “strengthen your hands for the good work.” (Nehemiah 2.8, 18).
The project we started to repair and renovate the Roosevelt High School hall after the fire at the end of last year has served to remind us that, much like God’s people in the days of Nehemiah, we as individuals and communities are “under construction.”
When God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” He/They (note the plural “Let us make”) intended us to be like Him individually and corporately – godly people in Godlike community; that’s why He goes on the say, “It is not good for man to be alone,” (Genesis 2.18) and why we all long for deep, meaningful community.
But the Fall (Genesis 3) didn’t only break us as individuals, it also broke our relationships, so that since the Fall community and good, healthy relationship in general are harder to create and maintain than they ought to be. Our modern, urban setting only exaggerates this problem:
- Our lives are often so full that we fail to make time for regular community.
- Our lives are often so fast-paced that we lack the patience required for regular community.
- Our lives are often so fluid that we lack to consistency necessary for long-term community.
What we need is margin, a gap between our load and our limit. Let us this year create the margin we need to develop a rhythm of regular community. Let us continue to become the family the Father is forming, the church the Son is building, the temple the Spirit is filling.
We might be broken people living in a broken world, but God has given us a broken Saviour to build us up again. We are under construction.
Blessings
Hennie & Rochelle Swart