IT IS NOT GOOD . . . TO BE ALONE

 NOVEMBER 21, 2022

Genesis 1:1; 31

1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth …. 31Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!

Genesis 2:18

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.”

John 13:34

So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.

1 John 3:23

And this is his commandment: We must believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded us.



From the beginning of creation, being alone was never the plan. So, God did something about that by creating companionship for us. That’s where this notion of community comes in.

So, what is community? As Jesus followers, community is having meaningful relationships where we do life together by sharing, encouraging, serving, forgiving, and pursuing faithfully after God.

I believe that community is a context where we can be our true selves with others. It is our place of safety; the space where we can share our greatest accomplishments and joys and our saddest moments and disappointments. It is a setting where we show up in each other’s lives for both the wonderful and the ordinary moments. It is the place of knowing and being genuinely known. It is pursuing God and developing into the person(s) that fulfills God’s vision for us. It is, to use the Apostle Paul’s words, “fighting the good fight” and helping those around us to fight it as well.

The Bible instructs us that we are to love others. There are some 59 verses in the New Testament that teach us how we are to treat one another. Here are several of the “one-another” passages we are called to carry out:

serve one another (Galatians 5:13)
honor one another (Philippians 2:3)
encourage one another (Hebrews 3:13)
pray for one another (James 5:16)
instruct one another (Romans 15:14)
forgive one another (Ephesians 4:32)

I recently read that “We can’t one-another one another if we are living our lives in solitude.” We need human connections. If we have learned anything in the years of this pandemic it has to be that we discovered how vital human connection and relationships are to meaningful living. We missed community, we learned that we took community connections for granted. Would you not agree that a key take away from periods of isolating from others was that we really do need others. We missed out on the richness that deep friendships can offer to others and bring to ourselves.

I will be honest I have not always embraced the gift of community, that decision was to my detriment. Over the next few days let us reflect together about God’s gift of community, and the impact that this gift can have on our living from day to day.

“It is not good ... to be alone."

REFLECT

Does being in a community of like-minded Christ followers excite or frighten you? Why?

Pray for God to show you your next step in developing and participating in community on a deeper level.