We live within a culture today that encourages people to isolate themselves from the very people with whom we are supposed to be interacting. Family members, close friends, neighbors, our church family - rather than growing closer to them we have pulled farther away. Granted we may still have contact with them, but that contact is almost exclusively through the use of technology. We have become a society that creates and maintains it's relationships through Facebook, email, text messaging, Twitter, etc., with very little, if any, personal, physical, face to face or voice to voice connectivity. Now, please understand, I am grateful for the ability which Facebook has afforded to me, allowing me to reconnect with friends of yesteryear, and to develop new "friends" to carry into the future. However, these people which we call friends, are people with whom we have not actually, verbally, spoken in many years, or at all. Yet, many of us see these people as our closest, dearest relationships, because we share our thoughts, activities, dreams, and tragedies with them on a daily basis. Yet, speaking and sharing with the people who share the same home, backyard fence, cubicle wall, etc. as us is quite rapidly becoming non-existent. Parents and children and siblings in the same house, rather than making a short walk from one room to another, opt to communicate via text messaging.
All this leads me to the bigger concern I have for those of us who are Christ-followers. If we can become so isolated from and aloof to the people we love who we can physically see, touch, and speak to, how much farther away from a strong relationship with God will we allow ourselves to become, as prayer means actual talking, and listening, and discerning, and waiting - all things we are losing the ability and desire to do.
It is imperative, especially considering our current spiritual climate, that we Grow Closer to God and His church and the lost who need Him, rather than drawing apart from them.Friends this will be our focus at First Christian church of Chester this year - Growing Closer - and I pray and encourage that it be all of ours personally as well. We need to get to know as much about God and His promised life for everyone as possible. Time is short. Life is too valuable to not be shared!
