Connected

By Pastor Paul Gauche

Today’s Word: CONNECTED as in… we thrive as connected people by nurturing healthy relationships, practicing intentional acts of kindness, and showing hospitality to create trust and build respect that sustains community.

I heard someone yelling obscenities. These were full-throated invectives backed up by a rage that concerned me. Fifty yards away, someone in a car was screaming at an employee through a drive-through window. As I approached this ugly commotion, the car sped off and disappeared into the otherwise beautiful Saturday morning. When I arrived at the drive-through window and looked in, I saw a small group of employees gathered around a shaken coworker who bore the brunt of the ugly experience. She was in tears. I asked if everything was okay. What the manager told me revealed that everything was not okay. The 16-year-old employee had miscounted the change due back to the driver. The manager then looked at me with that “you’re-really-not-going-to-believe-this” look: “It was only 11 cents. She missed the correct change back by 11 cents.”

Let’s pause here.

There’s a well-known phrase for moments like that. When someone deliberately hurts another human being, we say, “Hurt people hurt people.” No one involved in this verbal altercation had any sense of thriving in those moments. Yet, the connectedness between those workers began to reorient that young girl back toward thriving.

Thriving relationships emerge from healthy communities willing to invest in one another for deeper connectedness. Those caring coworkers who gathered around their wounded sister were invested in showing her the kind of hospitality that honors the similarity between the words ‘hospitable’ and ‘hospital.’ While they are different words, they are similar in that trust, respect, and an enormous amount of care and compassion become part of the power of a connected community filled with rich relationships where loved people love people.

Thriving Reflections:

++ Why would one of your best friends say you are their best friend?

++ How does your connection to people you don’t know and may never meet impact how you live?

++ How do healthy connections with other people help you thrive?

#100days50words

#Thriv’ëra

Paul Gauche is the Pastor of Life Transitions at Prince of Peace. His posts are part of his #100days50words project, where he blogs about a different word each week. You can follow his project on Instagram (@pgauche) or his blog, Thriving Rhythms.