The Friends Only You Can See

In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis makes a striking observation about what happens when a member of a close circle dies. When his friend Charles Williams passed away, Lewis expected to have more of his remaining friends — particularly Tolkien. With one fewer person in the group, surely there would be more of the others to go around. Instead, he discovered the opposite. He had less of Tolkien, not more. The parts of Tolkien that only Williams could draw out were now gone forever.

Lewis realized that each person in a community unlocks something unique in the others. "In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out," he wrote. No single person sees the whole of anyone else. We need each other not just for companionship, but because we literally cannot become our full selves alone.

This is what Paul means when he tells the Corinthians that the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you" (1 Corinthians 12:21). Every member of the body draws out gifts in others that would otherwise remain hidden. When someone leaves the fellowship — or never joins — the whole community loses dimensions of itself it may never know existed.

The person sitting beside you this morning sees something in others that you cannot see. And you reveal something no one else can. This is why the Almighty designed us for community — not as a nice addition to faith, but as essential to becoming who He created us to be.