True Community

Loneliness is rising. Depression is rising. Unhappiness is at an all-time high. And we think it's because we're just being bombarded every day by the headlines in the world, by more information than we can process, by problems and traumas and systems that we just can't solve. 

But that's not it. 

It doesn't matter how much you sit behind your computer screen and yell at me, how much you tell me I just don't get it, how firmly you insist that there are so many devastating problems in the world that of course, it's overwhelming...that's not it. 

Our problem is that we've pulled ourselves out of real community and settled for something fake, and we simply have no connection in the world any more. 

I don't believe any of us is called to address the headlines. I don't think we're called into the streets to protest what's happening half a world away. I don't think it's on us to try to fix the life of someone we've never met, based on nothing more than some principle that we claim to hold. 

I think we're called to hold our principles where we actually live. 

I think we're called to be in connection with our real community, with the folks right around us in our own little spaces where we can actually make a difference. 

I think if we spent more time loving on the persons God has given us - the ones we can walk down the street and talk with, the ones whose voices we know, the ones whose cars we see come and go or who we see walk by our porches every day - then I think we will make the biggest impact in the world. 

More than that, I think that if we were all doing this - taking care of our own persons in our own places, being deeply connected to and invested in our communities - then the headlines that we're so concerned about, that we're so consumed with, that we're so distracted by would start becoming fewer and fewer, too. 

I think that if we got off each other's pages and back into each other's spaces, we'd do a lot more good in the world than we ever can as keyboard warriors or, what is it we call ourselves? "Allies." 

The world doesn't need allies; it needs friends. And we can only be true friends in true relationship. 

I mean it. It doesn't mean I'm not concerned about what's going on in the world. It means that I recognize my limitations as a finite human being and I respect God's plan for one anothering, for the kind of love that happens only with real connection. 

I think we all recognize that. That's why the headlines outrage us. We look at what's happening, and our gut instinct says...why isn't someone loving that person? Why isn't justice happening over there? 

But if we are loving where we are and if we are offering justice where we are, nobody will be able to say that about the space where we live. And if everyone was doing that, well, there would be no places that would need our far-reaching love and justice; they'd already be taken care of. 

God really knew what He was doing when He gave us to each other. ...We just have to remind ourselves that that was the plan and stop trying to give ourselves to the whole world.