Build the 5 Relationships You Really Needಮಾದರಿ

We describe crowds as noisy, irrelevant, or distracting. They might be a little bit fun on occasion at a concert or a game, but overall, we don’t think of crowds as having any particular value to our soul. Crowds are the vast number of people—mostly strangers—who orbit your life but with whom you have no ongoing relationship. You see them, pass by, or briefly interact with them but share no significant personal connection when you intersect. So how could they possibly matter? Hint: they do.

But we are pushing crowds out of our lives with our increasingly cultivated digital echo-chambers and our Covid-inspired avoidance of large groups that spread germs. But our souls need crowds! In the crowd we don’t know what is going to take place. God created human life with elements of uncertainty as an unfolding story. When we push crowds out, we reduce the expectant possibilities of our life. In the crowd, God can send strangers to help, bless, or surprise you with divine appointments. He can also give you opportunities to find brand-new connections.

In our modern ways of life, we are rejecting crowds. According to Jesus, we must re-learn how to become a neighbor to live according to God’s design for us. Becoming a better neighbor always requires the crowd!

To Jesus, the definition of neighbor was much broader than his Jewish contemporaries thought. He surprised people one day when he suggested that the idea of a “neighbor” stretched all the way into the crowd—a realm almost completely missing from Jewish life. This surprising interaction and the parable of the Good Samaritan he told challenged people around him to consider the value of someone completely outside their notice. Someone they would avoid or dismiss or look at as a distraction. Jesus suggested that this very person might contain a key to living deeper into the thriving life of God himself.

The crowd not only holds new possibilities for us; it is a way we get to practice loving like Jesus—loving people who don’t deserve our notice. By doing so, we find the life God has promised us.

Where are you going to be this week with strangers around you? What is one practice you could adopt so that you were attentive and open to loving someone in that place?