Last week, the Centers for Disease Control reported that twenty-five percent of 18-24 year olds have recently considered suicide. This afternoon I spoke with a physician about this impact of the continued lockdowns on her patients.  She responded that in times of anxiety and worry about the future, human beings turn to each other. We yearn for community, especially in times like these. 

Instead, for months, we’ve been mandated to avoid each other in any number of ways and now we’re reaping the fruit of isolation.

The church isn’t meant to operate in isolation. We can not live effectively alone.

“If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose…the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you” (1 Corinthians 12: 17-18,21).

Whether we are facing a crisis or not, we should be avoiding the temptation to be isolated. We need each other’s strengths. It is the way we have been designed and we each have a role to play.

“We believe the world was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity. You were made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made.” – Tim Keller