Being With Someone

I’ve written recently that I am alone, especially alone in my failings, my sins, my poor choices. I made them. I did. But I’ve also written of the importance the commandment to “Love Your Neighbor”, and explained some of my thoughts on how to do that.

My thoughts onf being alone and being with neighbor are related, very related, yet conflicting. Alone, yet with someone? Can I consider these to be simultaneous events, events which can somehow be used to relieve my anxieties and bring me closer to God? The first obvious thing uniting these two is the fact that they both start with me, what I choose to do. But the equally obvious thing is that when I choose to be alone, one of the biggest regrets I have is not being with someone. Can I do something alone, yet be with someone? Can I better choose how to use this body of mine?

Jesus, God, gave us a critical example of the value of being with someone. While God, he chose to be with, and even become, man – one of us. We can never fully comprehend this gift, the love in that choice. In His Godhead, he is alone, unique. We celebrate Christmas as a great feast day, even more, I believe, than Easter. I think that is fitting, although many might debate otherwise. But the events of Easter could never have happened without that first gift, a gift of life. God choosing to become one with us is like all of the universe, all life and being, choosing to become a simple rock. Relatively speaking, our value, our significance, our ability to love and matter to anyone, to any thing, when compared to his Godhead is as valueless as a rock. Compared to all he is and can do, he chose to become as a rock, very little in importance, able to do virtually nothing. Yet he chose to come to us. Like any rock, we can’t begin to understand the significance of his coming, but he came anyway because HE knew the significance of his coming.

While he came for us for reasons only he could fully appreciate, I think we are aware even in our relative ignorance that in some important way we are different because of his coming. Rocks that we are, he moved us. And we’ll never be the same.

When I spoke of being alone versus with my neighbor, I was talking about my choice. One of the things I should never forget is that my choices are forever influenced by that choice of Jesus. He chose to be with us. That’s a critically important thing, a very basic thing of great value, being with someone. It’s a choice we must all give priority to, because he made that critical choice that we might imitate it, that we might appreciate the subtle, basic importance of being with each other.

I wrote of the importance of loving your neighbor, a point of basic importance even more than love of self, because our actions to love our neighbor is part of a continuity, enabling him to love God, love himself, and eventually love HIS neighbor, continuing a chain of love that started with Jesus’ coming. He first loved us. And the first love, the most basic thing he did, was come. He came to be with us.

You wonder about your aloneness, about your importance, about how you are leading your life. You wonder if you are loved, if you’re even worth being loved. Stop your wondering, and start learning the truth of the matter. Look at what God did for us, the example of supreme humility he gave us, the most important thing in modern history, perhaps all of history: he came to us. A God chose to be among the rocks, the relative nothings of creation. Look at that simple yet supremely important example, and if you can do nothing else, understand nothing else, follow this example he gave us: As he came humbly to us, may you go forth humbly to others, just to be with them. And they WILL understand, even if it is unsaid, what that means.

So how do you do this, this active example of loving your neighbor? Think basics, think simple. The priority in loving your neighbor is Christ’s example: first and foremost, try to be there with him. Be there with your spouse, your children, your parents -- be there, even just to sit with them. Even my mother, in her dementia, knows that by my presence I am showing I love her, and that matters so much – and she tells me so nightly. You could be working, you could be reading, you could be listening to music, but your first priority should be to be with others, not alone. And if you have to work, you have to shop, you have to be away with life’s tasks, then think to call them, email them, or just pray for them. Be with them, as close as you can get.

In all things you do, choose humbly to first do for others, even if only the most basic thing of just being with them. Then you will be imitating Christ’s most basic and greatest act of love. He came to be with us, that we might be with him.

Be with your spouse; be with your child; be with your sick neighbor; be with those in the prisons. Each matters. You don’t have to be a great apostle, you don’t have to say a word, your presence will say more than any words convey, and they will understand that you made this choice to be with them because you love them; you truly love your neighbor as yourself – and God will be smiling. You, you dumb rock, you really did understand his example.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon,
Where there is doubt, faith,
Where there is despair, hope,
Where there is darkness, light,
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.