a thousand words are worth...what?

tonight i passed time purusing the archives of my gmail account. the e-mails went back about exactly two years, when i started the address.

what this collection of saved conversation threads now serves as is a timeline of the ups and downs and in and outs and left turns of relationships in my community. like a stack of old letters, correspondence from september 12th would have given no indication of what things would be like on december 6th. but one thing i did notice, from the fall of 2004, was how polite we all were to each other, how considerate and intentionally encouraging. was this merely a reaction of treading lightly on relationships that were recovering from rocky patches or did we have something then that we've lost now in our time living life together? we certainly tread less carefully, but have we picked up some apathy as well?

there were pieces of my life in this community that i had completely forgotten about until reading these e-mails. i had forgotten that kris and i used to prayer walk together in the southside. i had forgotten pieces of the way we used to worship together. christmas of that year seemed to be a turning point. i'm not sure why, or what happened, but things started to go awry and tensions grew through that spring. we all got over it and each respective issue i suppose, given that they have no real bearing on my interactions today, but it makes me wonder what is ahead of us. these e-mails i have saved from the past two years are the messiness of community condensed into a couple of megabites. there are things i have in this community today that could have only come from time, that i would never choose to give up. playing cards and laughing last night with friend of 3 or 4 years is something that's precious to me, and as i've said before, as time goes on, the concept of family in this community takes on a deeper meaning. but were the ways we treated each other (well) during "the summer of love," the spring of '03, the fall of '04 - are they inevitable passing phases as we grow into the reality of "grown up" life together?

they are not things we can reclaim by our abilities, that i'm sure of. but when i look back on these broken pieces, it is in those moments where i saw Christ breathing and moving and living through this community and THAT is not passing. this fall, the pocket of people who call themselves followers of Jesus in Three Nails face another turning point. i believe that God is not done with this. if we ask Him, he will restore the broken parts, he will live and breathe and move through pittsburgh and the relationships of those around me as He has been. He will count it all to His glory, and i'm ready to serve him in it.