This morning I am sitting at my kitchen table watching two Sears delivery men install my refrigerator in my new apartment. This appliance is a staple in every kitchen. It holds meat, vegetables, and condiments, eggs, cookie dough ice cream, and anything needed to prepare a meal. Without a refrigerator, you just can’t cook. Don’t believe me? You should! I’ve been without one for a few weeks.
Now, where am I going with this? Well a refrigerator is a heavy appliance, yes? Imagine if they only sent one person to deliver it. That means one person to unload, assemble, and install this massive machine. Imagine that you are that person. Your day is spent delivering refrigerators, not a mini-fridge, or a garage fridge, but kitchen refrigerators. You do this alone. Now sometimes they are apartment sized, and not too massive. But at times, you are delivering to a mansion, a mansion appropriate refrigerator.
Now here comes the most cheesy metaphor you will probably ever encounter on becomingme.tv: that refrigerator deliveryman is far too often us. We go through our day to day lifting burdens that are far to heavy, doing a job meant for more than one person. And we get exhausted. On the flip side, we can become the other man. The man who is on their lunch break, watching our fellow delivery man struggle, sweat, and cry in pain as they have to unload alone.
Those refrigerators, that weight we carry around, are a part of our story. Maybe you’re in a season where you are on a “lunch break”. Life is light, burden-less, and feels like a brief moment of relaxation. Maybe you just got through the toughest “delivery” round you’ve ever been on. And maybe, you are sitting watching someone go through a similar “delivery”. You see them struggling, and you know some tips now that you have walked though it. You’ve learned how it can be easier, how you can make the burden lighter, in fact if you help, you could probably lighten the weight even further. Are you going to say something? Are you going to step in? Just for a moment? What about for a part of the delivery? What about the whole trip?
“Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble…A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10,12a
God did not design us to live life alone. Just like it takes more than one person to properly deliver and install a refrigerator, it takes more than one person to live the life God designed for us. You see your stories, your hardships, that loss, that breakup, that illness—God cried for you when it happened and He rejoiced with you when you got through it. Whatever it is, if you are following Christ, it’s not just for you to hold on to. Share it. Share the wisdom you’ve been given. Share the perception that only someone going through a massive breakup will understand. Share the understanding of being diagnosed with a chronic illness. Share the hope and the joy that you’ve experienced on the other end.
Because how much better would it have been for you to have had a friend during that tough “delivery”? How much lighter, faster, and even more joyful could that experience have been?
You’re becoming journey, the story that God is weaving together in your life, does not just stop and end with you. You’re becoming journey, starts and ends with the cross. And, it is at the cross where we discover that life is richer when we live life together.
Why? Because God designed us to be #BetterTogether.