Relationships

Over the last month, we have listened to the story of Job in Sunday Worship. Job is a story in the bible that is difficult to see the good in life as a believer in God and Christ. But Job is a great story to look at relationships between God and people and between people of faith. We all have good, bad, and complicated relationships in our lives. The question is do we approach all of them as loving Christians.

The easiest one to look at is the relationship between ourselves and God. Most have a relationship, but gauging the health of that relationship can be a little more challenging. Ultimately a relationship with God takes a lot of upfront work on our parts. We must tend to that relationship through study, reflection, prayer, and scripture. Even doing this, sometimes all we get is silence. But like Job, if we have faith in God and show our faith, God has faith in us in return. We must stay the course of our relationship with God even during times of frustration, sadness, anger, or other trials of life. God will be there for us.

When we have relationships with others, it is a lot harder because there is constant work. But unlike our relationship with God, it is typically easy to assess the health of the relationship. We usually know if a relationship is good or bad or if it is struggling. The problem with relationships with other Christians is that human beings are fickle. Our minds change, our attitudes change, and our lives are in constant flux. This continuous change makes having consistent healthy relationships sometimes tricky. Sometimes we drift further apart, and other times we drift closer together, and tending these relationships is like trying to hit a moving target. But the rewards of having these relationships with other Christians is a better practice of our faith and hopefully a continued exploration of our faith which allows us to go deeper in our relationship with God. Being able to lean on each other in crisis will enable us to stay true to our faith and not fall into the trap of falling away from God in times of crisis.

Finally, the last relationship is one with ourselves. This relationship is the most difficult and typically very hard to gauge. We constantly get caught up in societal pressures. We are frequently on the move going to meetings, visiting friends and family, phone calls, and so on. Life gets in the way of us connecting with ourselves. We forget to take time to decompress, regroup, and re-center our lives. When we fail to do this, it is typically when our relationship with God starts to erode or get put off, and we begin to drift away from God.

No matter the relationship, we have to maintain and continually work on it. Finally, to have a healthy relationship, we have to make ourselves vulnerable to some extent. The more vulnerable we make ourselves, the deeper a relationship will go.

            Relationships are meaningful as humans. We are not built to be alone. With all relationships come the good and the bad, but ultimately they are all worth it.

One comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *