By Gracie Cadwell
Class of 2024
Community is something that we all desire. It’s also something that the Lord provides in different ways. God puts this desire in us for a reason: to glorify Him. I have always desired Christ-centered community but I had never truly encountered it until three weeks ago when I started the Charlotte Fellows program.
God wants us in community. He did not intend for His people to live isolated. We were created to thrive within community. Romans 12:4-8 speaks about this. These verses state that though we are many parts of a body, we are all one body in union with Christ. A hand would not work well without an arm! We are created to be in union with each other to work as a full body. As we are all different parts of the body, we also are all blessed with different gifts. The passage goes on to speak about this as well: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.” We are different in our gifts but we are unified in Christ.
Community with my six (yes, Kathryn too!) newest friends has been just this. I have been able to see first hand how the body of Christ works. Up to this point, all of our lives have looked different, being filled with unique experiences and childhoods. But it is so sweet to see how our individual experiences bring us together and also how each of us brings out different sides of each other.
Over the summer, we were assigned to read How to Think by Alan Jacobs. In this book, Jacobs speaks on community and how different ways of thinking are healthy for us, especially being around others with different ways of thinking. Jacobs writes, “They are all so different from another, made of such dramatically varying stuff, yet taken together they are far greater than the sum of their parts. Each requires others to be complete. Badger’s friends draw him out of his gruff solitude; Toad needs the others to… well, to get him out of the trouble he’s constantly getting himself into. Without Ratty, Mole would never have learned pure joy.” This is a great visual to see the body of Christ come together in the book as well as the Fellows.
And the great news is…this is just the beginning of our wonderful community in Charlotte!