“It takes a village to raise a child.” says an African proverb. I have always been amazed by the interconnectedness of life, how everyone and everything are intimately linked and intertwined with one another. I am the sum total of all the people I have met and all the events I have been through. I carry in my present everything from my past. And yet I am totally new, every single cell in me is renewed and replaced every five years, ready for the future. There is thread that runs through my past, my present and my future. It is the same thread that runs through the lives of all people. This thread goes all the way back to our Source and Origin and forward to our final home and destination. And this thread is the connection that allows us to share in the life coming from that Source.
People and even things share in the nature of their source. As I watch our family grow, it is often unnerving to realize that there is so much being handed down from one generation to another. There is so much of Martin I see in Jonathan. There is so much of me I see in Jane. As we grow older, I am becoming more and more like Tatang and Anabelle is becoming more like Mama – for better or for worse. And all of a sudden I find a newer and deeper meaning to my wedding vows to love and to hold, for better or worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health.
This is what Christ was also telling his disciples all the time he was with them: see me, see my Source; know me, know the Father who is my Source. In turn, he says: if you want to see me, see me in my brothers and sister; if you want to serve me, serve me in the least of my brothers and sisters. It all makes sense intellectually. The real challenge is to live it out in what I do.
Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
John 14:7-14