Can you hear me know?

So a few weeks ago, I got told that I had a gift of being connective tissue. I have been working with that for some time trying to understand what I am supposed to do with that. This last Wednesday, I was sitting around with a group of friends, but suddenly I started to feel very alone. I am not in the habit of being moved emotionally by God. Its not the normal channel that he works in my life. I am not saying that God does not give me emotions and feelings, he does, but this is something wholly different. I felt physically separated from everyone in the room, like suddenly a glass wall had been dropped between us. I did not understand, I just knew that it hurt. The feeling started to get a little bigger, as in it was not the fact that I was separated from my friends in the room, it was much much larger than that. I started to feel as though I was the MOST ALONE ever, but it was not just a feeling of isolation, it was a feeling of separation, there is a difference. The only words that I can put to it are that I felt the separation of the church, that it was meant for something much grander, but we have decided to tear it apart into little bits, each one fighting the others over the scraps from the dinner table. It hurt, it physically made me sick, and pained, that people who all claim to follow this thing of God, are actually killing each-other over how they walk or follow or whatever. That we should put up these walls between us just because I want to have communion every week, not just once a month. Its inconsequential, small, yet we hate others over this stuff. Fast forward to this last Sunday. I got asked to tell my story for some of the other parts of the body, so I did, I told about how I felt so alone and isolated from people, and how this experience and my recent experience with some of my other Christian friends, has really been shaping the way that I feel about life and how I have been thinking all this stuff. The Body started to talk, it was good, we talked about how things can be brought into the Body, and how it can be a poison, how people can polarize over the issue and just run to one side or the other. One thing that I felt was that as humans, we look always to the differences, its classic log in your own eye. We focus on how someone else is wrong, we back that up with how we are right, but rarely do we take the time to really listen to what they are saying, we might just listen long enough so that we can than tell them how they are wrong, but REALLY REALLY listening?, I think not. I had a very cool realization about the whole connective tissue and how I need to use that. Again with a book reference, but The Power of One, Brice Courtney, it’s a book that has always been a book that has struck some kind of emotional truth with me. It has been my favorite book for as long as I have had a favorite book. It just resonated with me, on a deep sole level, I did not understand why till this last Sunday. The main character in the book is a white kid in Africa, South Africa. The natives recognize something in him, they decide that he is a legend, called the rainmaker. The point of the rainmaker is that when people get hot and dusty and angry with each other, the rainmaker, cools it down. This kid is able to be in three very different casts, each one hating the others, but somehow they all respect the kid, he is able to be a kind of connective tissue between things that hate each other. So, how does that relate to the Body? If the Body takes something in, it can be a real poison, pick your topic, there are a billion of them, homosexuality, marriage, divorce, abortion, whatever. If it is a strong thing, than people will polarize, they will run to one end or the other, if there is no compromise, they pull apart, split, the cell divides. If someone is there, who can be that rainmaker, that connective tissue, the group can hear the others, they were def, unable to hear what the other person has to say, but they can listen to someone different, someone who both people can hear. The body will not split, they will grow stronger, because of the struggle, (that which does not kill us makes us stronger). Everyone has the ability to become this connective tissue, it just takes listening to the other person, really listening, I did not say it was easy, but it can be done. So listen to them, listen to what there eyes are saying, if you are not being heard, perhaps you need to listen? Just a thought, but also a cool story.

M@