by Todd Martin
“Hey Dad, who are these guys?”
The phrase caught me a bit off guard. We had been working on my son’s condo renovations for about a week and I was getting tired of carrying old stuff out and new stuff in.
Daily I would ask if there were some guys he could call to come and help us. Finally he just blurted out, “Who are these guys?”
At that point it dawned on me he didn’t think he had any friends who could come help out. That turned out to not be true but it did impress upon me a concern I have for my son’s generation and society in general. That concern is a lack of community or at least a lack of the appreciation for community. As we become more individualistic we are robbed of the real values of community, the most important being an awareness of our inclusion in the Trinitarian God we call Lord. God reveals himself as community and has gone to great lengths to include us in that reality.
The more individualistic a society is, the less appreciation there is for God.
The noted Christian contemplative, Jean Vanier stated that, “Community is a wonderful place, it is life giving; but it is also a place of pain because it is a place of truth and growth – the revelation of our pride, our fear, and our brokenness.”
My fear is that we are missing out on this wonderful life-giving place and the growth that comes with it because we are afraid of the pain and having our pride exposed. Jesus had his guys (and gals). What about us?
Todd Martin is from Harvest Christian Fellowship