[picapp align=”left” wrap=”true” link=”term=smashing+doors&iid=6779440″ src=”2/0/c/b/Smiling_Through_be16.jpg?adImageId=10413064&imageId=6779440″ width=”380″ height=”570″ /]Last night I was working really late. I was alone and the lights in the office were off. I had to leave my desk to retrieve something and I ran shoulder-square into a door that was open but left slightly ajar. I think I bent my body frame. I had not been hit that hard since high school football.
This morning’s rising reminded me of last night’s unexpected collision. I pondered why my left side hurt worse when the right side bore the direct impact. I suppose the truth of “when one member suffers all suffer” is real, at least as it is applied to my own body.
This week I listened as a friend poured out the details of a hopelessly broken relationship. I could hear desperation and hurt in every syllable of every word. My friend is not alone, I could fill up paragraph after paragraph chronicling the artesian hurts shared with me just this past week. To my fellow Elders, I have described the past year as a tsunami of pain.
For my part, I know for a fact the hurts are not new and that the recession is not the cause. Access to easy money served as an analgesic; when the pills were taken away the veiled pain became clear.
So what are we to do?
I suggest we make the long walk back to connectedness. We must stop hiding behind the closed doors of our homes, the pretend niceties of our daily communication and begin to develop honest, sacrificial, and significant relationships. Only then will we be able to agree with Paul,
…And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it. 1 Corinthians 12.26-27, NASB
TheNarrowRoadPursued 
Praying that the tsunami retreats quickly and the pain lessens each day. Praying for connectedness to return as the significant relationships continue to develop. Thank you for sharing your heart with us.
Peace and grace to you –
i know that i long for those types of relationships… they were so easy to form in college, but since then it’s been a most difficult thing to cultivate. it is a worthy goal, however, and i intend to keep at it!
I find that life adds up quickly and real relationships are first to go. We have more tools to be connected than ever and yet are more lonely than ever. Relationships require patience and effort and time and vulnerability. As a culture we stink at it and what we pass off for relationships on TV helps none at all. The church is required to be different…right?
I must take gentle exception to your comment’s first line Robert. “Real relationships” are never really lost, just the time devoted to them reallocated due to other (what is forced on us as) more pressing matters. Beginning with our most important “real relationship” (being Jesus Christ through His Holy Spirit who dwells within us) and those in our closest circles of influence, radiating out to include the entire Body of Christ the depth of our experience in that relationship is dependent upon the priority we place upon it. Jesus spent His whole life modeling for us what relationship meant to Him, and in every aspect of it, what it looks like in real life–up to short moments before His death on the cross when He handed His beloved friend the responsibility for His earthly mother. He encouraged, He scolded, He exhorted, He loved unconditionally and spoke the truth in love. He didn’t pander to the weakness of anyone’s flesh, but putting the flesh in its place associated all things with the reality of His excellent worthy investment in us; His friends, His children, His beloved Bride. To respond with a question to your question…are we not to, in all things, “walk in His steps.” Thank you for sharing things on this blog that I know are painful for you to reveal. You are precious. You are deeply loved.
Amen.