Personal Transformation in Community

But if you are friends with Jesus, the presence of ungodliness in your life brings you remorse because you really do want a friendship with him more than with anything else. If that's you, Communion helps you realize that he doesn't hold those disloyal moments against you, even though by rights he should. He continues inviting you to a relationship with him, despite knowing dividedness will remain in your heart while you are on this earth.

Those simultaneous proclamations of my need and his invitation realign me personally to live my daily life by faith, but they take place among my relationships with others. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 that, while we individually participate in Christ as we receive Communion, we do so as part of one body. Communion is not a solo undertaking. Being transformed into God's likeness--while on our way to live with him forever--happens as we journey together in hopeful, hope-filled relationships.

--William P. Smith, Loving Well (Even If You Haven't Been) (Greensboro, NC: New Growth, 2012), 77.