WOH: The Beloved Community
I was visiting my daughter in New York City, and we stepped into a French pastry shop. Two beautiful young girls were selecting macrons with their mom. We fell into chatting together and discussed the various flavors which led to, of course, the flavors of life and joy together. We connected it on the beauty of daughters and the importance of being good sisters, and various wonderful conversations of life and love.
As we chatted, the family’s father came into the store and started to talk with my husband Shann. Very quickly we discovered that they were believers. At the end of this 20-minute talk together we exchanged numbers and hugs and found such delight in this interaction.
Since that random encounter three years ago, we continue to receive various texts from the family, which is always a surprise and reminder of that serendipitous friendship.
The father, who is a believer in Christ, always reminds us in the text that we have this glorious friendship to look forward to in heaven. We have brothers and sisters all around the world that we get to love for all eternity.
This is the beloved community.
For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you[f] to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. – Colossians 1:9-14
