Pastoral Ponderings—Real connections?
It’s all about the connections—do we have a theme developing, as if staying connected might be rather important? This time it is again coming from our remodeling project: We’re having to replace an old set of stairs that had some obvious dangers with inconsistent risers, but I found an even more scary problem when I was taking them apart (like a haunted house, appropriate for Halloween I suppose?). It looks like the stairs I’m replacing had no real, solid connections to the surrounding stairwell it has been mounted in for the past 80 years. How has it not collapsed?
The danger of the tenuous connection was hidden, though, and it is nigh unto miraculous that the stairs haven’t fallen yet. So with our new stairs, we’re obviously building in more solid connections, which even with the concrete blocks the stairs are mounted between, is not too difficult—IF we are intentional to build in those connections from the start.
The importance of connections—with God, with family, with other support systems, is SO very important in our lives, both in a spiritual and in every other sense as well. When things go terribly bad in a person—whether resulting destructive behavior toward self or others—is most often linked to either a lack of real connections, or often a hidden lack of real connections (as has been the case with these stairs!).
How are your connections—with God, with family, with community, with others? Are they REAL connections, or barely there? And like with my stairs, it’s really not that difficult to build in much more secure, dependable connections—but it does take intentional effort. Let’s build some better connections! And in fact, one of the best ways to build those connections is a wonderfully tasteful and tasty way to go—Eat together! Bake cookies, share a meal or a cup of coffee—as simple as that! Let’s connect better—it’s not really that difficult to build new connections…
Pastor Jim—making connections!