The Lights We Need From One Another

In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis makes a striking observation about friendship and community. He writes that in each of his friends, there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. "By myself," Lewis admits, "I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets."

Lewis learned this truth through loss. When his dear friend Charles Williams died unexpectedly in 1945, Lewis assumed he would naturally grow closer to J.R.R. Tolkien — that their remaining friendship would deepen with one fewer person in the circle. The opposite happened. Lewis discovered that certain sides of Tolkien — particular jokes, certain depths of conversation — had only ever emerged in Williams's presence. When Williams died, those facets of Tolkien became invisible too. The group didn't just lose one member. They lost what that member uniquely drew out of everyone else.

This is how the Almighty designed the body of Christ. Paul tells the Corinthians that the eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you." Each member of a community calls forth something in the others that would otherwise remain hidden. Your presence in this congregation is not incidental. There are gifts, insights, and expressions of God's grace in the person sitting beside you that only you can draw out — and parts of you that only they can see.

We don't just need each other. We need each other to become fully ourselves.