Last month we announced a new prayer emphasis in the
parish. We are praying for people who feel alone.
As we said last month, that does not necessarily refer to
people who are single or who are shut-ins. It can include those people,
but we can be surrounded by family and friends and still feel alone.
Aloneness is a feeling that we have no one we can go to when things go
wrong. We have no one we can confide in when we have problems. We
have to carry our burdens, whatever they may be, alone and in secret, because
no one cares enough about us to want to share those burdens with us.
When I was writing about this last month, and when I
talked about it with others, I kept feeling like there was a word I was trying
to think of and I couldn’t think of it. I think I’ve thought of it now.
The word is “connection”. We need to feel that we’re connected to
each other.
“Connection”, after all, is a good United Methodist word.
John Wesley used it all the time, usually with the old English spelling
“connexion”. We sometimes refer to our denomination as “the connection”.
We say that we have a “connectional system”, with each individual United
Methodist church connected to every other United Methodist church. We’re
also connected to all of the organizations of the United Methodist church.
We support each other and help each other and accomplish much more that
way than we ever could by ourselves.
That’s what we’re talking about in this prayer emphasis.
We need to be connected to each other. We need to support each
other. We need to help each other. We need to love each other and
encourage each other. That’s what life is all about.
You know, in the second chapter of Genesis, we read where
God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone”. I don’t think God was
talking about marriage, necessarily. What I think God was talking about
is that life is too big and too hard for us to go through it by ourselves.
We’re not meant to do that. We need other people to help us.
We need other people to be there for us. And sometimes we need to
be the “other people” who help and are there for someone else.
I think that’s one of the main reasons God created the
church. After all, it’s entirely possible for someone to believe in God
and to accept Jesus Christ as their savior without going to church. God
did not need the church to get believers. One of the reasons the church
exists is so God’s believers can support each other and strengthen each other
and encourage each other and help each other. And another reason the
church exists is so God’s believers can reach out to others in love and support
them and strengthen them and encourage them and help them.
As God’s children, we are all connected to each other,
whether we’re inside the church or outside of the church. But it’s not
enough to know that in our heads. We need to feel that connection in our
hearts. We need to feel that each person we meet is our brother or our
sister. And we need to show love to each person, the way brothers and
sisters are supposed to. That means we need to be there for each other,
in the good times and in the bad times and in all the times in-between.
So
let’s make that one of our New Year’s resolutions. Let’s be connected to
each other. Let’s be connected to each other within the church, and let’s
be connected to those who are outside the church. Let’s be there for each
other. Let’s care for each other. Let’s support each other and
encourage each other. Let’s love each other. Let’s let there be no
one in the communities of our parish who feels alone in 2015.
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