Five-Minute Friday {Red}

For the past three weeks, I’ve been linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker for her Five-Minute Fridays. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it at first, since I’ve also enjoyed sharing my Friday Freebie posts (I love offering you free printables!). But during the past three weeks, I’ve come to love Five-Minute Fridays: just five minutes of unscripted writing on a prompt Lisa posts. So I’m linking up with her again today. Her prompt this week: RED. And here’s what came to mind …

Red solo cups sit wedged between knees and on side tables. There’s iced tea in a pitcher and cookies on a plate and a circle of adults who have gathered in a living room to do life together. The kids are upstairs with a sitter, and the noises emanating from down the stairs make it sound as though there’s a war going on: toys crashing, stomping, energetic yelling and laughter.

And truth be told, there’s a war going on right in our circle too, deep in the hearts of all of those gathered. We’re battling deep scars and pressing struggles, feelings of inadequacy and lust for more. We paint on smiles and share in humor, but if we dig deep, we’re all fighting something. And so we gather as a group to unpack God’s truth and unearth the ugly. This infant group, barely three weeks old … We’ve committed to do life alongside one another, to encourage, support, admonish. This group of people who will soon be our closest neighbors.

Community is taking root, growing in the midst of that circle and reaching its branches out into the greater neighborhood. A community that invites us to come as we are, remembers us in prayer when we’re absent and embraces the raucous energy of preschool kids. At least that’s the hope, the hope that within this group we can dig into the living word of God and see the hands and feet of Jesus sitting amongst us, with red solo cups in hand, drinking from the fount of living water.