In our Friday Morning Prayer Group we were invited to consider all that God has done for us this past year. Community. We were in community with each other and with God this morning. I was in community with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit in prayer and discussion after our Prayer Group meeting. He asked me…Come let us reason together. What is your fear? My answer? Being alone, I mean truly alone; failing; messing up and others hurt because of me. Along with other comforting words, He told me: Stop holding onto burdens and hold onto Me. In Me is your answer and your peace.

More community I enjoy is the Zoom recorded Open Table Conference discussion of Hebrews. In each of these and other small group meetings is the hunger and search for God and His teaching us. Being open to learning what He would have us understand…trusting Him to lead us and then sharing our incredible journey with each other as we lift one another up – just as God wants us to do. Community.

In Deuteronomy 9 Moses is reiterating all the disbelief of the people who desperately needed God and yet wouldn’t trust Him. Yesterday watching the Open Table Conference recorded discussion of Hebrews 3, what struck me so forcefully was unbelieving hearts of the Children of Israel in their wilderness. Isn’t that our core problem? See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” (Psalm 95:7,8) Hebrews 3:12-15. Turn to the living God.

Today is given. Today we can be in community with God and learn from Him. We can encourage one another in community and share our love for God and our need for Him every day. We need each other. We need to turn to God.

I learned in Deuteronomy 9 that Moses, after breaking the original two stone tablets that God wrote the Ten Commandments on because of the sin of the people, I fell prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the Lord’s sight and so arousing his anger. I feared the anger and wrath of the Lord, for he was angry enough with you to destroy you. But again the Lord listened to me. And the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, but at that time I prayed for Aaron too. Also I took that sinful thing of yours, the calf you had made, and burned it in the fire. Then I crushed it and ground it to powder as fine as dust and threw the dust into a stream that flowed down the mountain. v. 18-21.

What did Aaron do? He started a whole new cultic religion with an idol as the people prayed and danced. What did Moses do? He prayed for Aaron and for the people.

Aaron and the people didn’t know they were deceived. That’s the problem with sin. Our hearts become hardened by sins deceitfulness. How we all of us need believing hearts. We need community of other hearts longing for God to cheer us on and help us grow. We, like the people and like Aaron – and like Moses who was faithful in all God’s house, are all too human. And we are never alone. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Hebrews 2:14-18.

Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says, “I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises.” (Ps. 22:22). And again, “I will put my trust in him.” (Isaiah 8:17). And again he says, “Here am I, and the children God has given me.” (Isaiah 8:18) Hebrews 2:11-13.

In God is our answer and our peace and with Him guiding us, we are in community with God and with one another and it is uplifting and freeing. Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Trust Him. He is good and He is here for you. He knows your fears and doubts. Nothing you say to Him will surprise Him. Nothing you do will cause Him to stop loving you. Nothing. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39. We are in community with God who loves us and died for us and lives for us. What a wonderful community of love.