Defining Belonging

In our most recent blog we ended with this:

When you consider what it means to belong to a club, a church, a workplace, etc., you can understand that your belonging is conditional. You pay a due to a club… give a tithe, etc., at your church. At work you contribute your blood, sweat and tears. You belong, for the most part, because of how you perform. Your status in the group is measured by your contribution… All of this can be understood to be performance based.   

These kinds of groups then, have limits on the sense of belonging that can be gained from being part of them.

Is there more to understanding or knowing this “sense of belonging” than going to church or paying dues at the country club? The truest forms of love, which are (when it remains a true friendship based in love and grace) and true friendship, all seem to share a few common elements:   

1.   Knowing (= truly seeing and being seen). 

2.   Loving/Accepting (= affirming, valuing, celebrating, inviting, including, etc.).    

3.   Sharing life.    

1.   Knowing (= truly seeing and being seen).    

You can’t “belong” (with/or to someone in the relational sense) if you don’t know them and aren’t known by them. So “transparency” and “truth” make “belonging” possible. If you don’t really know the other, or are not really known by them, you’re just pretending. You don’t “belong.”   

**Come back to our next blog to see more about true love and belonging, especially more about Number 2 and 3 on the list, loving/accepting and sharing life.

We have works other do and we’re going to need faith to do them!  

**(See earlier blogs for more on God’s plan for you or buy the book “From Here …By Faith”)