Five Minute Fridays: Together

What a treat to have written live at Allume with a packed room of women for Lisa Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday.  Here is my offering:

There we were.  Cross-legged, encircled and laughing.  It was this deep sense of belonging.  Of knowing.  Someone who had only been a little avatar was suddenly a real live person hugging and sharing cupcakes.

I know together and I know apart.

I have felt how apart can alienate and how together can restore.

Oh, never more true in these circles and tables and couches of women with one thing in common: Jesus.

The man who exemplified what together looks like.  Who brought together the Pharisees and the tax collectors.  The man who used the harlot and the hundreds.  The man who wanted us to come together in community so much that he stretched out His hands and died to give us the opportunity.  To be together here and hereafter.  So we would know togetherness and belonging.

Just in case you haven’t felt that you’ve joined together with a deep connection lately, let me encourage you to reach out across the aisle, the street, the office hallway, the board room, the grocery store, and join others together.  To be the emissary of together and create spaces where people can feel known.

And in the meantime, let’s stand together.  Sisters and mothers and daughters and friends and women who know that together is the only way to move forward.  That apart only tears at the fabric of who we are and what we stand for.