25 Ties that Bind...

It all started right here on the internet. On that marvelous little social networking site called Facebook. Someone (I don’t even remember which friend it was now) posted a note entitled “25 Random Things About Me” with instructions to write your own list of 25 random things about yourself and “tag” other friends, who in turn will make their own lists and pass it on to THEIR friends…and so on.

It started a firestorm. Every time I checked my new messages, someone else had written a list. And I would learn something I never knew about someone I may have known for YEARS (some of these people I’ve known since kindergarten--a really long time!!) I have friends who’ve done some pretty amazing things in their lives--gone on huge adventures, raised beautiful children, served as foreign missionaries, pastored churches, or battled life-threatening diseases and won the battle. I have friends whose lives have been more placid and less “exciting” but who’ve had strong influence for good in the lives of their children and the people around them. I’m really blessed with some incredible and diverse friends…all over the world.

I have some pretty incredible friends in my church family, too. As I read one friend’s list, though, I realized that I’d just learned more about him in 30 seconds of reading than I had learned in the past couple of years of “knowing” him from church. That’s sad. That's my family. God calls us a “body”. And if He calls us that, I know He expects us to act like one. To really know each other…and that means more than just knowing names and faces. Saying “good morning” as we pass each other on the way to our pew or shaking hands and hugging during “pass the peace” time isn’t all there is to it.

A body is…well, a BODY. Connected. Intertwined. The veins that carry oxygen through the bloodstream to feed cells in my fingertip are the same veins that carry the same oxygen down to my big toe. When someone steps on my foot, my nerve network alerts my entire body…and my entire body reacts to jerk my foot away from the pain. As a living representation of the body of Christ, as the hands and feet and voice of Jesus to this world and to each other, we carry that same responsibility to be connected and intertwined and inseparable from the people in that little “body” of believers we call our church family. When someone is hurting, our “nerve network” should be so attuned to that hurt that we instantly do what is required to alleviate the pain, just as we would instantly do what’s required to alleviate pain in our physical bodies.

I don’t necessarily need to know 25 random things about everyone in my local gathering of Christ-followers (although I wouldn‘t mind!), but I DO want to know my family better. And with that knowledge, I’ll know God better, too.