Day 68: Who’s Got Your Back?

When he entered Capernaum again after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many people gathered together that there was no more room, not even in the doorway, and he was speaking the word to them. They came to him bringing a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they were not able to bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and after digging through it, they lowered the mat on which the paralytic was lying. Seeing their faith, Jesus told the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Mark 2:1–5

I love Tuesday mornings because that’s when I get to hang out with a group of beautifully authentic women (from a wide range of church and unchurched backgrounds) in an informal home Bible study we started about twelve years ago. And I’m hoping we get to hang for at least another twenty-five years of Tuesdays because Belle’s living room houses such a deep well of true friendship, hard-knocks-kind-of-shared-wisdom, gentle correction, fierce loyalty, and raucous laughter—especially when the fire alarm goes off repeatedly during a lovely and intimate prayer time!

We’ve shared so much life together—we’ve limped through heartbreaking divorces, grieved the deaths of loved ones, danced at weddings, welcomed each other’s adopted children home at the airport, gotten baptized in the Jordan River, ridden roller coasters at Dollywood, been each other’s shoulders to cry on, and have at some point pretty much all been the one on the mat who desperately needed to be carried to the roof and lowered to Jesus. The rapture and rupture of real life we’ve experienced together has proven that a thriving community of Christ-followers isn’t about having it all together, much less looking alike or thinking alike or even worshiping alike.

Quite frankly, I think the drive to look exactly like everyone else more often than not becomes a barrier to true communal intimacy. Because a lack of diversity effectively narrows the circle of who’s welcome and what’s appropriate until those inside the proverbial circle find themselves nervously balancing on one foot to keep from getting booted to the curb themselves.

Instead, the divine gift of community is about wrapping all of our God-given uniqueness around the supremely authoritative axis of our Creator Redeemer and the life-giving promises in His Word, which then frees us to forge a miraculously miscellaneous, Jesus-shaped family of faith.

• If that strikes a chord with you, how about calling or texting the people you trust to help lug your mat to the Lord and liberally sloshing some friendship-fertilizing gratitude on them?
• If you don’t have friends who will carry you to Jesus, how can you make some in this season of your life?
• Who in your life might need you to carry them on the mat to Jesus?