"We're In This Boat Together"

Just the other day, I was working with my three boys to get the house cleaned up, as I do every day when they get home from school.

Each son cleans his own room, along with a couple of other jobs, like sweeping the kitchen or vacuuming upstairs. I have chores of my own as well.

I find it interesting that every day millions of Christians spend life in a vacuum; many of us living as if no one else exists in the world, doing my job, driving my car, buying my food.

The chores that my sons and I do in our house help us to live in a more comfortable and sanitary home. And with six of us, it’s easy to come home to a wreck, when we don’t all do our part.

So, I realized as we were well into our chores that two of the boys were sitting in the living room playing video games, because they were finished. And while they were having fun, one of my sons, with a slightly more demanding chore, was busy finishing up. For some reason I suddenly realized, after sixteen years of raising children, that my children are learning to do “his” part—and that’s all. I walked into the den, with a smile, and told the two virtual “Tony Hawks” to get up and go upstairs with me to help their brother get finished, so that he can play too.

Jesus taught us to be unified. And somehow we have managed to live alone, no matter how many people we are near. Our Messiah taught us all that we are part of a family—a community.

Paul teaches us in his first letter to the Corinthian believers that we are all one body (1 Cor. 12:13).

And before Paul, the ancient Jewish teachers taught that everyone is his brother’s keeper (Genesis 4:9). The sages of Jerusalem also believed that when a person destroyed a single life, it is as if he has destroyed the whole world.

My children need me to teach them that we serve a God who believes that we belong to each other and that everything we do has an affect on all of us.

There’s an old story, which is at least 1900 years old that brings this point home clearly.

“The story is about three men in a boat. Suddenly one of the men begins to drill a hole beneath his seat. When his friends immediately plead with him to stop, he replies, ‘What are you worrying about? I’m only drilling under my seat.’ The moral drawn by the rabbis has been repeated again and again: “We’re all in the same boat.” –Marvin R. Wilson, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith, Pages 188-189

I pray that today, we will all learn that none of us is a community of one. I pray that we will all work together until our jobs as followers of Jesus are done. I pray that none of us will ever trust in the doctrine of self-sufficiency , which has been passed down along with the doctrine of “private confessions,” “personal Saviors,” and “individual Scripture interpreters.”

I pray that you will be my keeper and that I will be yours as long as we are in this boat together.

Forever learning,
Johnny