What if…

What if all this “advancement” is not truly the best means we could have of a good life.
I often think about how it is always said that we have such great means of communication via our electronic devices. Travel makes it possible to make the world a smaller place. But what if we are supposed to do that by being right where we are without leaving? Becoming so entrenched in our neighbors that we really do collectively meet each other’s needs?

I am in constant thought about relationships. We hear it said all the time that when you are living your last days you won’t regret that you didn’t work more. You will regret the time you didn’t spend with your loved ones.
However, take that a step further and really think about what your relationships mean in your life. And I’m not just talking about your family. I’m talking about all the people that have aided you in either because they taught you a direct lesson in your life or because they did so inadvertently.
When we are in a marriage, we understand the difficulties we face in being relational with one person on such an intimate level. And it’s hard. Really hard. But what if we stayed. And worked out our difference because we had no other option. It would force us to be deeper in our thoughts on how we relate. It would force us to examine ourselves. Examine our behaviors as well as others. So that instead of being divisive because we have to continually face the same people constantly, we had to learn how to respond in ways we never delved into.

We would create a community of people that truly have unconditional love toward one another. It may not be the kind of love that you can imagine right now. The kind of love we are living right now is built on the premise that we can find other groups to be around. Or even worse, we create online communities where we can depict ourselves in whatever light we want to. And if a particular group we have joined online boots us, we find another group. And we can garner support by virtue of never really getting close enough. Or build it based on only one facet of ourselves that we have found commonality in.

That is not the way we are supposed to live. When we stick it out with people because we have to face them daily, we learn a very different mode of being in a relationship and it looks a lot like marriage.

When I think about the Ten Commandments, they are all about relationships. First, our relationship with God, and thereafter about our relationship with things and people. If I am looking to follow God’s Will for my life, and I start with the most basic concept of Christianity, there it all is, right there. The rest of the Bible is a means of understanding all the details of what that looks like. So why is it so hard every day?