June 13 - Acts 2:42-43

 

They devoted themselves

to fellowship … and awe

came upon everyone …

Acts 2:42-43

 

I remember sitting in my college dorm room when a new television series premiered. The show was okay … but I absolutely loved the theme song. I sang it in my head all week. I tuned in the next week primarily to hear the song again.

 

The show was Cheers, and Gary Portnoy’s famous song addressed one of humanities greatest needs: Belonging. (You’re welcome to listen as you read.)

 

Making your way in the world today
Takes everything you got
Taking a break from all your worries
Sure would help a lot
Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
The troubles are all the same
You want to go where

Everybody knows your name.

 

Belonging! Starting with the Garden of Eden – and heaven’s observation that it’s “not good for the man to be alone” – we know that we’ve been built for community. We feel it in our bones. But from bars to teams to clubs, how many in our world keep seeking cheap counterfeits to the community we’re designed to find within the church?

 

Indeed, that’s the heartbreaking observation of Larson and Miller in The Edge of Adventure. They say …

 

The neighborhood bar is probably the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give his church.

 

It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but it is a permissive, accepting, and inclusive fellowship. It is also unshockable. It is democratic. You can tell people’s secrets and they usually don’t tell others or even want to.

 

The bar flourishes, not because most people are alcoholics, but because God has put into the human heart the desire to know and be known, to love and be loved, and many seek a counterfeit at the price of a few beers.

 

You love people. You want a place to belong. But in what “communities” are you choosing to look for the counterfeit rather than the real.

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who doesn’t want

the Secret Service to

investigate me,

I want the real rather

than the counterfeit