Oswald Chambers wrote,
“Our human relationships are the actual conditions in which the ideal life of God is to be exhibited.
Do we forget this as the anxieties of life buffet us first one way, then another? How often do we say one thing and do something completely contradictory to what we just said? Many of us say our spouse, family, friends, are the most important part of our life. Do we live like it? Do they think they are the most important part of your life?
What keeps you from spending time with those you think and say are most important? There are necessities of course, but many things that keep us from spending more time with one another are not the things we ‘think’ we have no control over; distance, illness, work, irreconcilable differences. Do some relationships require more from you than you are willing to give? Simply put, you’d rather be doing something else.
The distance between family members is increasing, geographically and personally. The latter requires more of us, but our Tweets and Facebook friends require only an occasional comment. The quantity of our relationships is more important than the quality. We seek solace in the many distractions we share with like-minded people, but we find it more and more difficult to be with one another without doing something.
We know much of our character is historically conditioned, but we have no idea how much of our character is morphed by cultural and social conditions. We are moving quickly into a culture of many acquaintances, but fewer and fewer close friends. It seems the more we try to be original the more we are all the same. Is that not a product of our quest to conquer time? We skim our relationships the way we skim books in graduate school. In our efforts to make the most of time, to get more and more accomplished in a lesser and lesser amount of time, we swallow our food, but never taste it.
Why are we shocked to discover depression can be treated with the love of a dog? The very thing we are moving away from, intimacy, is the cure for our growing laundry list of disabilities. Dogs are never too busy to be with you.
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