Real Hope: Community & FamilyPavyzdys

## COMMUNITY In recent months our experience of family and community has shifted. Gatherings of large groups, holding church en masse, and being with other people in noisy vibrant spaces, has dramatically reduced. With that shift, maybe our understandings of community and family can change too. Often, we think of acting in a community as the ‘gatherings’, where we do group sport, or attend a book club, meet with friends at local cafes. ‘Community’ brings with it a sense of the large, expansive support networks that exist around all of us in various ways. It’s found in the suburbs we live in, the church we go to and the country we’re from. In loving that side of community, though, perhaps we’ve been missing the power of the small, intimate and unassuming representations of connectedness that social isolation has made us more aware of. God is always with us individually, and can be invited into any space, but all He needs to ‘do church’ or show up and be present in any moment, is for just two or three people to be together wanting Him there. If you ever feel like your family is too small, your community too limited, just remember that the infinite magnificence and all-consuming love of God can inhabit even the most humble of gatherings. ##### written by LAURA BENNETT