Infusion Bible eStudies are downloadable small group studies that can be read online, printed, or emailed. Each study includes a leader guide and a study guide and is suitable for a one-hour group Bible study.
Listen...to the words of the Scripture, and in them discover God's message for you today.
Look...at a brief verbal snapshot from the scrapbook of contemporary life and discover its connection both to you and to the Scripture passage.
Live...inside the Scripture to discover its context and message; then allow the Scripture to come alive in you and cause you to live out your faith in new and more-effective ways.
Read an excerpt from this study below.
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When John Donne, the seventeenth-century poet-preacher, declared, “No man is an island, entire of itself,” he put into poetic language what everyone instinctively knows. We humans are meant for community. We may at times want to isolate ourselves from the human race; but if someone insists on doing so permanently, we conclude that something is seriously wrong with that person. We know we need to belong.
As soon as one becomes two, however, agreements have to be established. Some years ago, while with a tour group in the British Isles, I had a roommate for ten days. We were friends (I was his pastor.), but we had never traveled together. As we unpacked at our first stop, he said, “Ellsworth, we should each have our share of the bureau tops, sink, and end table. I’m left-handed, so why don’t I take everything on the left.” We traveled well on the basis of that little contract.
Our agreement was a simple covenant for a short trip. Life’s longer and more complex relationships call for more details than space on an end table, however. Friendships operate largely on unspoken understandings, at least until issues arise. Marriage involves a covenant declared before witnesses, and business partnerships often involve legal documents. Suppose a body of people entered a continuing relationship with God? Could there be a covenant for such a union? What sort of covenant would it be?
