I had an extremely eventful weekend—boots in the house! cousins
drove out for the day, Christmas program Sunday morning, and work at night. It
was a busy, but extremely exciting!
Something we had to do while our cousins were here was go
bowling—it’s almost become a tradition. But while we were on the way there—I cannot
remember how it came up—but my cousin was telling me what she had been studying
in their small-group Bible study at their church. She said they had been
studying the word or the concept of oikos.
Oikos is a Greek
word that, according to Strongs and BibleStudyTools.com, is defined as:
1. A
house
2. The
inmates of a house, all the persons forming one family, a household
3. Stock,
family, descendants of one
My cousin explained it to me as more of number two. She
called it “the people you do life with”. She said they learned it was a group
of usually 8 to 15 people that make up your every day, people you see, talk to,
deal with, on a regular basis, and our big parts of your life (whether they’re “good”
parts or not ;). I found a similarly minded article which I’ll add to the end
of this post :D She went on to say how, yes we are to take the share the Gospel to our Judea
and the “uttermost parts of the world” but also our Jerusalem, and our oikos is our Jerusalem. How we need to
be impacting, loving, and leading/pointing the people in our oikos to Jesus.
It was a very interesting and new concept to me, and I really
enjoyed learning about it.
I usually work Sunday nights, and this last Sunday night,
after they had our candlelight Christmas service, nearly our entire (yes, it is
small ;) church came out to eat where I work. They filled up the lobby, gave me
a hard time as I took their orders ;) sang a Christmas carol, and honestly
rather made my night :D
After everyone was sitting down and fellowshipping, I was
back behind the counter, cleaning up a mess, when I just tuned in to the
conversation and laughter behind me. Sure, I hear this type of thing whenever I
work, but this time it was familiar laughter, familiar voices. And I realized
something: they were my oikos. That group of about 40ish
people are literally the people I do life with. The ones I consider my family,
closest friend, people I can trust for Godly counsel or simply encouragement;
the friends I can be completely crazy with, but serious too; the ones I would
miss extremely bad if I were to switch colleges and attend another
out-of-state; the ones who love and accept me (and my family) for who I am.
They are my oikos.
And I love them and appreciate them very, very much!!
What about you? Who is your oikos at this stage in your life? What do you appreciate about
them? :D How was your weekend? What random, awesome things has God been teaching you?
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Here is the link I referred to earlier: I haven't read it thoroughly, so I'm not saying I agree with/condone everything it says, and it is taken from a specific church's site; just sharing it for interest and the sake of further study :)
http://www.granitecreek.org/oikos-defined/
http://biblehub.com/greek/3624.htm
http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/nas/oikos.html
