Living in Community

Day 5-6 Audio Israel Blog - Travis and Jessica Visser

http://gtitours.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Day-5-6-Audio-Israel-Blog-Travis-and-Jessica-Visser.mp3

These past two days have been a time of exploring what living in biblical community might have looked like. We visited many sites and saw remains of old houses that were built close together. These closely built houses were called insulas. Families would live in close quarters – and continue to do as their family grew.  For instance, when a son got married, instead of him moving out on his own, his parents would add on another floor or room to the existing house. In these times, family was a huge part of life. There weren’t any other distractions in life to take away from this.

Now, let’s compare biblical lifestyles to the life that many of us live today. In biblical times, there was no privacy. Homes were small and there was no room to allow for any private space. In our modern lives, we have our own homes with our own homes. We come home, press a button to pull into the garage, and stay inside until it’s time to leave again. There’s little interaction with our neighbors. Taking it a bit further – nowadays in homes, there’s even little interaction. Families can all be in the same room, but it’s common that they’ll all have some sort of electronic device consuming them – not letting them to really be present with one another.

These past two days, we covered two big themes: Shabbat and community – living biblically. We’re called to live alongside one another. To do life with each other. Shabbat is the Sabbath - a twenty-four time frame in which we rest and spend time with family. This is something we (unfortunately) don’t see much of anymore. Our challenge for our return home after visiting the day’s sites and experiencing Shabbat was to keep that intentionality going. How can we unplug from our social media ‘friends’ and really do life with those we’re close with?