Holding One Another When the World Shakes
The Reverend Kay Dennis, Deacon
Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast
We are living in a time when the world feels perpetually unsettled. Conflicts erupt and linger within and across borders and generations. News reaches us faster than our hearts can absorb it. The language of fear, division, and threat seeps into daily conversation until uncertainty feels like the atmosphere we breathe. In such a moment, it is tempting to retreat—into distraction, into cynicism, into the illusion that private faith is enough. Yet the Christian story insists otherwise. In times of global unrest, faith is not meant to be borne alone. It is meant to be carried together.
Christian faith has always been communal at its core. From its earliest days, the church gathered not because the world was stable, but because it was not. The first communities of believers met under the shadow of empire, persecution, and violence. They shared meals, prayers, and possessions not as a strategy for survival, but as an expression of trust—that God’s life was already binding them together in a way fear could not undo.
Coming together as a community of faith does not require us to have answers to the world’s crises. It requires something far more difficult: presence. To gather is to say that no one will carry grief, fear, or confusion alone. It is to resist the isolation that conflict breeds. When the world fragments, the church practices cohesion—not by denying difference or pain, but by refusing to let them have the final word.
Uncertainty has a way of narrowing our vision. We become preoccupied with self-protection, with securing what we can while we can. Community faith gently but firmly pushes back against this instinct. It widens our attention beyond ourselves. In worship, we speak words of hope we may not feel alone. In prayer, we carry the names and suffering of others when our own strength falters. In shared silence, we acknowledge that not everything can be resolved with language.
The church does not gather to manufacture optimism. It gathers to tell the truth together. Lament has always been one of faith’s most honest practices. In times of conflict, lament allows a community to name what is broken without rushing to explanation or blame. It creates space for grief that is not tidy, for fear that is not resolved. And in doing so, it keeps hearts open rather than hardened.
Community faith also anchors us in a larger story. When domestic and global events threaten to overwhelm us, the church reminds us that history is not solely shaped by human power or failure. God’s purposes are not erased by violence or uncertainty. This does not minimize suffering. It places it within a hope that is larger than the present moment. Together, the community holds this hope when individuals cannot.
In practical ways, coming together matters more now than ever. A meal shared, a phone call made, a hand held during prayer—these gestures may seem small against the scale of global conflict, but they are acts of resistance. They testify that love still finds expression, that care is still possible, that fear does not get to dictate how we live with one another.
The steadiness of community does not eliminate uncertainty, but it softens its impact. It gives faith a body. When one person’s hope falters, another’s steadiness carries it. When courage wavers, shared prayer strengthens resolve. The community becomes a living sign that God has not withdrawn from the world, but continues to dwell among us—in voices raised together, in tears shared honestly, in faith practiced collectively.
In a world that feels increasingly divided and fragile, coming together as a community of faith is not an escape from reality. It is a faithful response to it. It is how we learn again to trust, not in our own certainty, but in a God whose presence endures even when the future feels unclear—and who calls us, again and again, to hold one another until the light becomes visible once more.