Another way to build our relationship with God is to build our relationship with one another. Just as a mother wants her children to be in strong relationship with each other, so God wants the same for us. Wherever we look in Scripture, we find the call and the command to be with each other.

God's work - Our hands

It begins in the garden of Eden, continues through the covenant God makes with us through Abraham and Sarah, cements itself in the ten commandments, and is personified in Jesus Christ. Jesus boils it all down when he gives us a new commandment, "To love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34).

This commandment, while challenging, is given in love for the benefit of us, individually and as a community. Loving one another includes seeing God in one another, and recognizing gifts in the differences that another brings. God gave us different talents so that we must rely upon one another to reap the full benefit of all God wants for us.  For, as Paul teaches, even as we each bring different gifts, we are all gifted from the same Creator, inspired by the same Spirit, and we are most whole when we embrace all the gifts, especially those different from our own (1 Corinthians 12:4-11).