Thought of the day
Emperor penguins survive some of the harshest conditions on earth, temperatures that can drop 50, even 60 degrees below zero, by doing one thing: they huddle. Packed together tightly enough, the inside of that huddle can reach 75 degrees while it's 50 below just outside it. And they rotate. The penguins on the freezing edge move toward the center, and others take their place. Nobody stays protected forever. Nobody is expected to survive alone on the edge forever either.
Paul paints a similar picture of what God is building. "In him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22). Notice that word together. Paul isn't describing a bunch of individual home-improvement projects happening side by side. He's describing one structure, joined, rising, built on Jesus as the cornerstone that determines the shape of the whole thing.
This matters because so much of the New Testament simply cannot be obeyed alone. Love one another. Encourage one another. Bear with one another. Carry one another's burdens. You cannot "one another" yourself, no matter how disciplined or spiritually mature you become on your own.
There are seasons when you're strong enough to carry somebody else, and seasons when you desperately need someone to carry you. That's not weakness . . . that's exactly how God designed us. Some of us are standing ten feet from the huddle insisting, "I'm good," while quietly freezing.
Today, think honestly about which edge of the huddle you're on. Maybe you need to move toward someone who's struggling. Maybe you need to let someone move toward you. Either way, you weren't built to survive this alone. None of us were.