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Day 17: Together

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31 Days of Five Minute Friday Free Writes

“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together,” Hebrews 10:24-25a (NLT)

Day 17: Together

As an introvert, I don’t mind being by myself. Actually, I enjoy it. But…there are times that I also crave to be together with those I love and care about. There’s really nothing more precious than family gathered around the table, friends huddled next to a campfire, brothers and sisters in Christ raising their voices as one in praise, or co-workers joining to solve a problem. Some of my favorite memories are times of togetherness.

“Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed.”
Ecclesiastes 4:9 (NLT)

King Solomon’s wisdom in the Old Testament still holds true today. Recently I’ve been going through a book to learn more about a skill I’m interested in and my friend Jane kindly offered to read along with me. We meet weekly to discuss what we’ve gleaned from the pages. Now, I could have done it all on my own. But… this is what I know about myself: most likely I would have procrastinated and put off reading to the end or rushed through to get done and missed some important points. The offer to go through the book together held me accountable, enhanced what I got out of the content, and made it fun to complete. Jane has helped me succeed.

Ecclesiastes 4 goes on to say that together, there’s always a helping hand to lift one another up and it reminds us how much easier it is to feel warm and comfortable when we are side by side. And isn’t that the case with us? On our own, this world can be a cold place offering us much to fall prey to. But….together…

“A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.”
Ecclesiastes 4:12 (NLT)

Whether it’s the love of family, support of friends, prayers of our church, solutions from those we work with, or yes, even a book buddy, face to face or “back-to-back,” being together improves our good times and bad. But…adding One more makes everything better!

Avoid ~ Day 16 ~ 31Days2019

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“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,” Acts 2:46 (NIV) / Pixabay

Avoid

There are lots of things we avoid. I would guess that some of the what I avoid, you do too. Things like snakes, bats, closed in spaces, the dentist, and others. Then there are those things that since moving to my rural, farming town I’ve had to learn to avoid the hard way: such as being stuck in a manure pile, an angry rooster, or eating raw ramps. And of course, there are those things I’ve learned to avoid by mistake, specifically swallowing a chicken bone, trusting my GPS, and brightly dying my hair the day before leaving on a trip with my friends.

On the flip side, we all have things we avoid that we shouldn’t. I’m thinking of things such as exercise, a yearly check-up (including the weigh in), ** cleaning out our closets, and getting together more often.

Why is it that most of us don’t make time to gather with friends and family anymore? Yes, we’re busy. But are we really too busy to find time to share a meal, have a game night, sit around and talk with those we care about or do we just no longer make it a priority?  I’m asking myself these same questions. Knowing there’s so much pain and suffering in the world today and time is short, shouldn’t we want to be with each other more rather than less?

“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. Hebrews 10:24-25 (NLT)

Just imagine the difference it might make in our lives, our communities, our world if we’d come together more to support and be supported, to inspire and be inspired, to minister to and be ministered to. Or, to simply laugh and have fun. I think it’s about time to make a change. How about you? What if we stop looking at our phones and watching our T.V.’s as much, left work a little earlier, cleared a day on our calendar, and instead shared some of that time with friends and family? Let’s challenge each other starting today, to scratch gathering with one another off our “to avoid” list and begin making it a priority to “not neglect our meeting together”. Are you with me?

Now, who wants play a game of Yahtzee and have some popcorn?

This post is written as part of the 31 Days of Five Minute Friday Free Writes Challenge. You can read posts from other writers on the same topics over at http://www.fiveminutefriday.com I hope you know that I so appreciate you being here! God bless, Cindy