little did i know

Being humbled is so uncomfortable. 

We have lived in this Dallas home for a little over three months now and I'm currently packing to move us to Connecticut next week. This will be my sixth move in almost six years of marriage. Ya, wow. As the moves became more frequent, I acquired nasty reclusive tendencies. I got to the point where I no longer saw it as a problem, but rather, I found "peace" in my crazy hermit behavior. As some of you already know, it's very easy to hide from the world if you work for yourself. In my heart I knew community was important, but in my head it just sounded like a bunch of work that would go down the drain if we were to constantly move. I started to dodge people in my community, especially my neighbors. This was the case until just now; after I read C.S. Lewis's friendship chapter in The Four Loves, my illusions of a healthy hermit lifestyle began to fall apart. The real zinger for me was when I heard, "You can't know God by yourself". That kind of painfully hit home. It's true, because I became so good at ignoring community, I am pretty much oblivious to the rest of the countless facets of who I call my king. Well, thank the Lord that today is a new day. I'm leaving my hermit habits at the door...our Dallas door that is. 

"What Lewis point's out is, it takes a group to know an individual, any one human being. You can't know that individual the way a group of you can know that individual. Only the group brings out the whole person. Then, if that's true of a human being, then you can't know God by yourself. You can only know a little piece of God by yourself. The part that you see, as it were, is a part that you're holding back from other people who need what you have, and you need what they have."
- Tim Keller 

(click here for Tim Keller's sermon, "The Gospel, The Church and The World"...it's long and complicated by the way) 

“I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call (any person completely) into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all (their) facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, "Here comes one who will augment our loves." For in this love "to divide is not to take away.”
- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy" to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.”
- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves