A Well Not a Pedestal

I had the privilege this past weekend to visit the Jacob’s Well community in Vancouver. I have known of Jacob’s Well for a number of years and have learned much from hearing Joyce Rees speak on a number of occasions. It was a pleasure to add color to the sketch of ideas I had about what exactly the community looked like. More importantly though it was an honor to meet the people who follow the call of Christ on there lives to live together and love their friends in their neighborhood.

The people of Jacob’s Well have been on a pedestal for me in that I’ve looked up to them as great examples of what it means to follow Christ. After having met many of them and having spent the weekend with them, the pedestal is gone. Let me explain… Someone who is on a pedestal has a life that is unattainable due to the different perceived spiritual plane that they are on. Once the ground is level though, their example becomes that of a fellow follower of Christ whose life I can learn from and model my own after in specific ways.

Their life of neighbor love costs time and comfort. Their life in community is accountable to one another. There live together is full of joy, and tears. Is ours? Is mine?

Anyway check out the website or read their most recent newsletter to learn more about this exemplary community of real fairly normal people with much to teach us.

Blessed are the physically repulsive,
Blessed are those who smell bad,
The twisted, misshapen, deformed,
The too big, too little, too loud,
The bald, the fat, and the old—
For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus.

-Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy