“You didn’t run out of money; you ran out of relationships,” Jim Etheredge, the director of Brother Bryan Mission, told 60-some men at a recent graduation hosted at the Advent. It’s a poignant message to expose the dire situation in which men find themselves when they wander into Brother Bryan. Drug and alcohol addiction is a pernicious evil that strips people of dignity and brings them lower than they ever imagined. When they run out of money, they run out of options. And their behavior ruins their relationships with everyone they love. So they wind up in a community where they can no longer ignore their need for a saving relationship with Jesus Christ and relationships with other men who are seeking to live honorable and productive lives.
The phrase got me thinking about how often I mistake a need for a change in my circumstances for the deeper (and more difficult) work of relationships. Much of the brokenness in our lives doesn’t stem purely from material or physical maladies, but from relational pain and disconnection. The loneliness epidemic of late-stage capitalistic technology is not due purely to the power of Apple, Microsoft, and Open AI. The struggle to be a human being lies in the importance of relationships – with God, with other people, and even with oneself. The Fall of mankind is not simply about the world not working properly but about the warping of relationships. Our Triune God is a relational God, and we bear his image. You and I are made for relationship with him and have been brought near through the mercy of the person and work of Jesus Christ, his Son.
“You didn’t run out of money; you ran out of relationships.” If our problem stems from dysfunction in relationship, that is the very means God uses to bring healing, wholeness, forgiveness, and restoration in our lives. And that is Good News for hearts
hungry for connection. You and I are invited to dwell in renewed relationship. Thanks be to God that his redemption is full and complete in Christ!
– Adam
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
–John 15:5