Belonging

My prayer for all of them is that they will be one,

just as you and I are one,

Father – that just as you are in me and I am in you,

so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me. 

John 17:21 (NLT)

One crisis of modern life is a sense of isolation and loneliness.  “Each human being comes into the world alone, travels through life as a separate person,and ultimately dies alone.”^*   Even in a crowd or with friends or family we can feel alone.

Jesus describes his intimate relationship with his father in this way - “you are in me and I am in you.”  It was a complete and total unity.   As we ease drop on his prayer in John 17 we begin to hear that deep longing of his heart that we, too, could experience that intimate sense of belonging that he experienced with his father.  Yes, we do belong. We are no longer lost and wandering alone but have come home to the closeness of a loving and united family.

 

As much as we belong to him, we belong to each other.  Jesus desires that we as his people would be one as he and the father are one.  He continues to teach and train us daily to this end - teaching us to express this unity to each other in tangible ways so that not one of his children would feel on the outside looking in, but would truly sense the closeness that belongs to his intimate circle of friends.

All who are mine belong to you,

and you have given them to me...

John 17:9-10 (NLT)

Holy Father, keep them and care for them – all those you have given me – so that they will be united just as we are.  John 17:11 (NLT)

I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are – I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one. 

Then the world will know that you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me.  John 17: 22-23 (NLT)

^*Carter, Michele; excerpt from Abiding Loneliness: An Existential Perspective, Park Ridge Center, September 2000