Droopy Drawers and Belonging
As another deputy and I made our late night rounds of the Imperial Valley Mid-Winter Fair and Fiesta, we noticed teenage boy after teenage boy with pants down low around their waists. You know the guys I am talking about. They wear their pants down below their behinds and then cinch their belts tight so the pants don’t fall all the way to the ground. These guys are so stylish that they can’t walk without putting their hands in their pockets to hold their pants up. They remind me of my kids when they were young. For little kids, Isaac and Critter could produce massive amounts of, well, fecal matter. In short, they could eat nothing but a chicken leg and produce ten pounds of diaper filling. Then their diapers would sag low behind them and eventually drag on the ground. It was comical to watch them drag their Pampers behind them, tugging on the waistbands so they could get through the living room.
This year at the fair there were punks, lowriders, skinheads, cowboys, and, worst of all, overweight guys in Hawaiian shirts. They dressed differently from each other, but they all had one thing in common. They were all trying to identify with someone or something bigger than themselves.
Maslow states in his “Hierarchy of Needs” that we all have belonging needs, and he is right. God designed us to want to belong to something bigger than ourselves.
Don’t believe it? On the days of creation, God looked at each thing He created and said, “It is good.” Then God created man and said, “It is not good that man is alone.” The only thing that God said wasn’t good was man’s aloneness.
When Jesus was asked which commandment was the most important He said,
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.” (Matthew 22:37-40 The Message)
When asked what was most important to God, Jesus said that loving others was just as important as loving God.
I meet people all the time who tell me that they don’t have to go to church to be Christians, and in one way they are correct. Yes, you can have a relationship with God without ever going to a church, but God wants more than that from us. God wants us to have a relationship with other people, to love them and care for them. We really do need each other. In Leadership magazine, Patrick Morley said, “The height of our love for God will never exceed the depth of our love for one another.”
Andrew Murray said, “My relationship with God is part of my relationship with men. Failure in one will cause failure with the other.”
One of the great things about belonging to the Church is that we can begin with the idea that no one will ever have to be alone. I believe this is God’s purpose for all of His people.
Take a look around you this week and see if there is someone who needs you and your friendship. Who knows, if we reach out in love to people, we may be able to keep them from drooping their drawers!
Blessings… Jerry