A New Habit: Togetherness

They say it takes about three weeks to make a habit.  Once the new behavior is established, you don’t have to force yourself to do it.  Eventually, you find yourself snapping to action without a second thought at all.  The pandemic has caused us to establish some new habits in order to keep each other safe from the coronavirus.  We wear masks, keep socially distanced and avoid gatherings.  As a society, we have settled right into that habit.  After all, we’ve had a lot of practice.  It’s been over a year of social distancing.  After a year of this, it’s not just a habit, it’s our new lifestyle.

But the pandemic will not be with us forever.  A day will come when we will be able to return to normal.  Normal?  What is normal?  Do we remember how to do normal?  I suppose it’s like riding a bike.  You just hop back on and start pedaling!  Not so fast.  Before we jump right back into whatever normal was, let’s see the opportunity that is before us to establish a new and better normal.  This last year has embedded in us the habit of staying away from each other.  While it’s a good habit now, it could turn into a bad habit once we have more freedom from the virus.  So, let’s develop a new and better habit.  Let’s get used to being together.

While this is a good idea for everyone, it’s especially important for the church.  God designed us to be interdependent.  That means we need each other.  We are like a body, where each part is important for the whole body to function. Imagine your thumb losing contact with your elbow.  That’s not a good thing!  They work together.  In a similar way, we all play a different role in God’s kingdom and we need to be connected in order to do it well.  

While the pandemic has raged, we’ve tried our best remain connected.  Technology helps, but it has its limitations.  Emojis will never replace a handshake or a hug.  Singing along with worship in your living room will never replace the sound of the congregation belting out a favorite song together.  No matter how creative you are, sharing a meal over Zoom doesn’t quite satisfy!  We need to be together. God wants us to spend time together, to eat together, to laugh together, to pray together, to worship together and to encourage each other.  

I want to be clear here.  I’m not suggesting we become reckless and spread COVID all over the place.  What I am saying is that we should stand ready to develop our new and better habit of being together, especially as we can safely gather more people more often.  We need this!  We needed this before the pandemic.  We need it even more now.  Let’s value togetherness even more than whatever normal used to be.  Let’s make togetherness the new normal.  

Habits are only established through repetitive behavior. In our case, that means gathering over and over and over again regularly until it becomes a habit!  So, as things open up, let’s get creative about our excuses to get together.  If you look in the Bible, the Jewish people had all sorts of holidays and excuses to get together.  I love religious gatherings, but we don’t even need to be that serious.  Did your sports team win a game?  Throw a party.  Did you get a pandemic puppy?  Throw a puppy party.  Is it a beautiful day?  Invite some friends to take a walk together, or fire up the grill, or pull out the lawn games, or all of the above.  As we do, we’ll rediscover and recover one thing lost during the pandemic, each other.