Greater than the sum
Today Google tossed this article by Barbara Sher onto my screen. I’d never heard of Barbara Sher. Apparently she invented life coaching, but I’m willing to forgive her because the story she tells is really good. Here are a couple bits:
In one of the groups, the Tuesday night group, I could tell that something very special was happening. One of the members, an unprepossessing fellow (he had been described as ‘Woody Allan without a sense of humor,’) had admitted to his first feeling: he was unhappy because he was lonely and wanted a girlfriend.
At first they shook their heads and told him to forget it. “Women hate you, Ronnie,” one of the members said.
“I know,” he said. “Fix me.”
They started to protest that everyone had to fix themselves when I interrupted and said, “It doesn’t look like Ronnie is going to be able to do that. Why don’t you all help him out?”
And they did! The Tuesday night group, instead of talking about their own problems, decided to get Ronnie a girlfriend…
Right then and there I got it: orphans don’t make it. Isolation is the dream killer. You can get what you want even if you don’t love yourself and don’t feel positive — as long as you have an ongoing team to help you think and back you up and help you over the hard spots…
Read the article, and as you do consider: abundance culture is one of honest recognition that I don’t personally possess every thing, talent or strength I need. God has designed humans in such a way that we need each other in order to thrive.
‘For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.’ (Romans 12:4-6, TNIV)
18 February 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: abundance,
community,
humans
blog comments powered by Disqus