On our recent travels seeking spiritual renewal, one of our stops was at White Sands National Park, New Mexico. It was a place full of insight, despite it’s being a rather eerie place in a surprising way. I grew up in FL where vast stretches of white sand means beaches, crashing waves, seagulls, a salt sea breeze, and sounds of the revelry of countless sun-seeking tourists were all a package deal. But at White Sands, the very familiar looking sand was all by itself, and in the desert silence, seemed so alien instead.
With no water either within sight or hearing, and hardly a soul in sight, sparse vegetation lived in desert-like conditions. The occasional lonely trees were few and far between; more often than not, what had been trees were only skeletons of dried roots. But in our little hike across the white sand, I also saw a rather large tree that was still standing, that was silently telling the story of her fallen sisters. Isolated from surrounding vegetation to help protect the soil from constant winds, she was barely clinging to the ground with taproot and other main supporting systems exposed by ten feet, looking like a catastrophic collapse was imminent.
Seeing this haunting sight, I couldn’t help but think of the importance both of our own rootedness, and of the support of the community of rooted ones around us. Immersed in this silent struggle, scriptural language of “a dry and weary land where there is no water” sprung unbidden to mind. As sad as this lonely tree seemed, the not uncommon sight of dunes and plants sharing the mutual support and protection of widespread root systems, holding together and hanging on where they were clustered in community, was a deeply encouraging, immersive parable.
Have you ever noticed the challenges of loneliness, or worse, those who fall to scandal of any sort tend to follow isolation from rooted support systems? The isolation need not be physical—big cities are often said to be the loneliest of places—but comes from either purposefully or accidentally cutting social ties. Yet the erosion of support is just as real, and can collapse even the strongest of souls.
Retirement is often a part of this social isolation. The natural relationships and routines that are a part of a working life fade away, and when people fail to put new patterns and relationships in place, social isolation naturally follows. Is it any wonder that we’re stuck in an epidemic of loneliness?
Even if you have managed to build and keep in place a community of support, many of your neighbors and friends have not. God has not called us to be a lonely skeleton of dead and dried up roots, but to “build one another up in Christian love”—and not just those IN the church, but those who have not found a place in a church yet. It’s not just a good thing to do—it is our high calling from God! Pastor Jim
