Knowing People's Names Isn't Enough

 Have you ever been in a place where you knew the name of many people in the room and you still felt alone & disconnected?

Maybe you even knew a few facts about the people - their job, if they're married, if they have kids - but you still leave that event feeling like you didn't really connect with anyone?

It's likely you know exactly what I'm talking about. You probably have your own experiences of it. It's something common to many people.

This way of living and interacting has become the norm in our culture. But, it isn't how God has designed us to live. We feel lonely and disconnected because we're missing some of the things that are vitally important to having the community we were created for.

Knowing people's names and factual information about them is not enough. We have to go beyond those surface conversations with some people. That's what we were made for that we're missing.

In our appearance and image-obsessed culture, we've sacrificed being real. We're so focused on how we appear on social media and to the strangers we pass as we run our errands, that we don't share what's really going on.

Even the "struggles" we share in our attempts to "be real" in these environments are carefully chosen. We share carefully crafted words and things that are still planned to make others think well of us.

What we're actually longing for people where we don't have to think about what we share. 

We need people who will genuinely celebrate the good things in life with us. 

People we can laugh so hard with that we cry or snort and we don't care.

People who will sit and cry with us.

People we can ugly cry in the same space as without worrying what they think of us.

People who will sit with in whatever is going on without giving advice or trying to fix it.

People who will ask us the hard questions and tell us the hard truth when we need it.

We've sacrificed this for surface=level conversations where we maintain our image. And we're lonelier than ever because of it.

The only solution is to take the risk and invite people into this kind of community with us. To move beyond the surface-level conversations to deeper conversations.