The Power of Relationship

It's so easy to be a seclusionist in today's world. Just get yourself lost in the shuffle. It's really rather simple if you really aimed at it. Yet, as a follower of Jesus I am asked to go into the world and be relational - reflect Him. Jesus really had something when He came to earth and from inside the womb of Mary related to His cousin John in his mother's womb.

He is saying to us at that point that if we are to be change agents for good in this world it will require the risk of getting out into it and relating to others. Well, for some the risk is great, for some moderate for some non-exisistant. For me I am beginning again, after a pretty tough life blow, to understand and appropriate relationship. What is the prime need of humans? To love and be loved. This involves relationship, listening, hearing, empathy and sympathy, walking in someone elses shoes.

Which is easier to say to a world of people that need to know someone cares - come let's visit a while or get over it that's life? I think if we see Christianity as relgion and church as a place for religious people the world will shun Christ as it has for hundreds of years. Many church folk who consider themselves religious they have become relational assasin's strapping relational time bombs to themselves every time they go to church. It's all about the function for them, without any relational substance. They just blow up everything with their negative, crappy, self-centered selves hindering the power of God in the life of a church.

Yet, for some, who follow the path of Christ, people see a clear vision of Christ only through the relational, authentic, genuine way they live out Christ's teachings and lifestyle. I don't aim to simply be a functional believer. That wreaks. What I want to be is in relation to God and in relation to man so that this world and the next might know what love is - in that I have loved and related in a positive way to my neighbor.