A Body in Need is a Body Indeed – Today’s Family Devotion

A Body in Need is a Body Indeed

Bible Reading: Romans 12:3-8

Since we are all one body in Christ, we belong to each other, and each of us needs all the others. Romans 12:5

Your body parts are getting together for a meeting. The chairman, your hand, calls the meeting to order—your hand, after all, is the only one who can grip a gavel. In a sur­prise first piece of business, your big toes step to the podium. “We quit!” they shout.

“What are you talking about, Toes?” growls your belly.

“We’re tired of getting stepped on,” your big toes moan together.

“You are low guys on the totem pole,” injects the funny bone.

Hand raps the gavel. “Order, please!”

“We’ll run away,” Toes reply. “We can wriggle to wherever we want.”

“You won’t be able to see where you’re going,” observe the eyes.

“We’ll get by,” one toe insists. “We might even take our friends with us. The feet feel the same way we do. They’ll probably hoof off with us too.”

The forehead wrinkles. Then your mouth speaks up. “Maybe you can get along without us, Toes, but we won’t make it without you. We count on you to keep us bal­anced.”

“Because of you,” say the hands, “we can put our best feet forward.”

The toes wiggle at the attention. “We do get kind of a kick out of hanging out with the rest of you. Well, maybe we need each other more than we realized.”

“And that’s what I’ve been thinking all along,” the brain concludes.

Here’s a question to talk about: Do you ever think like those toes? Do you wish you could get along without other people?

Folk singers Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon sing Simon’s famous words about wanting to tough it through life without the help of other people: “I am a rock,” they sing. “I am an i-i-i-island.”

Lots of us like to sing along with those words when we’re mad at the world. But seventeenth-century English poet John Donne wrote some other words that are much closer to the truth: “No man is an island.”

As much as you might try, you can’t make it through life alone. After all, even Jesus wanted fellowship, friendship, and prayer with his peers. So your friends, family, and others in the church—the body of Christ—have something you need. They’ve got help, encouragement, and companionship you can’t live without!

TALK: Do your family members and friends know that you need them? Are you meeting their need for you?

PRAY: God, thanks for keeping us attached to the people in the church, the body of Christ, who love us.

ACT: Go ahead. Tell someone today that you need him or her.