Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Piloting

The word has to do with the navigational handling of a ship--"near land using buoys, soundings, landmarks, etc..."

Luke has me listening to Josh Garrels again. I don't like all his stuff but I've been enjoying his new album this week. Pilot Me, each time it comes on, strikes a chord in me for sure: "I will arise and follow you over/Savior please, pilot me..."

I'm reading my way through Ecclesiastes. Last night before bed I was thinking about the purpose/function/gift of relationship and community. I had read 4:9-12,

"Two people are better than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided chord is not easily broken."

So I got thinking about relationship for all these things: companionship and service, growth and transformation, health and well-being, protection and safety, warmth and closeness...

I'm more and more convinced that relationship is a remarkable (might I even say, miraculous) gift.

Not to say there aren't some hideous and twisted expressions of relationship (of all kinds) out there, but that those aren't the healthy, right or true. They are perversions of the healthy, right, and true. Some look there and say, "No way, I don't want to risk that happening." And I'm that person sometimes. But its wrong, you see. And to skip out of such a remarkable and wholesome experience in life would be to...miss out in profound ways on the gift God's given. Relationship. Community.

I guess we say, "I will arise and follow you over/Savior please, pilot me..." And we keep at it...we keep building our relationships; investing, loving, serving, praying...because two and three are stronger than one...



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