I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ …
- from Ephesians 3:17-18
 
In today’s passage, we read Paul’s prayer that his friends would really grasp the love of Christ; and this phrase stood out to us: “together with all the Lord’s holy people.”
 
For Paul, there’s something about the wide-long-high-deep love of Christ that can only be grasped when we’re together. And by “together” that means all of us – God’s holy people throughout history, scattered across the globe, and even worshipping in different churches on different sides of the tracks.
 
Our small churches in our small communities have a small but significant tile to place in God’s great mosaic. There are things we see that others don’t see. There are things we’ve learned through experience that others just haven’t picked up yet (and may never apart from our help). There are ways of connecting with God that God has revealed to only some of us. This is wild!
 
And yet the opposite is also true. Our brothers and sisters in Christ who’ve been dead for a thousand years still have something to teach us about our Savior. Our siblings in Latin America have something to show us. Our neighbors whose theology or praxis makes us a little crazy have something to offer us. No man, no woman, no church is an island.
 
You cannot go off by yourself and grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. But God wants to be known. And he wants us to know his love for us. That’s why he places us in communities and encourages us to lean on each other.
 
How has your community helped you grasp truths about the love of Christ? How have you connected with the global and historical church along the way? What do you think we can learn from our neighboring Christian communities?