Independent People – Sunday, September 02, 1956
In any area of activity where two or more people participate, there sometimes comes the question as to whose part is most important — Whose service is most essential? — Who could get along best without the others? This question of comparative importance sometimes occurs in communities, in business and industry, in athletics, even in families, and in all organized activity.
Fathers who come home tired from the duties of the day, could feel (and no doubt sometimes do) that theirs is the important part—and that what happens in the household is more or less a routine matter. But then sometimes the household becomes disorganized when the one who is most responsible for its activities is absent or ill — and the indispensable nature of the so-called routine tasks is soon and sharply in evidence Or let the winner of the livelihood suddenly become ill or absent, and soon the importance of the part he plays is also sharply apparent.
Sometimes children take things very much for granted — or may even feel that they are imposed upon. But later, with family obligations of their own, when they are faced firsthand with the problems from which parents have somewhat shielded them, they soon learn of the weight and the work that was carried by others for them — which once they were little aware of. husbands and wives cannot safely suppose that the work of one is above that of the other, or that both do not, now and always, need each other.
Nor can children or brothers and sisters. And so, it is in all society. Innumerable people, most of whom we never know, provide for us comfort and safety, and innumerable essential services. Literally there is no such thing as an independent person — even if some of us sometimes act as if we were.
All our lives have become so intertwined that the comparison of Paul is ever more impressed upon us, as being as true, or more so, as when first it was written some nineteen centuries ago: “For the body is not one member but many. . .. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. . ..”1
The fact is that the whole core and content of life is so dependent upon the performance of others that all of us need all of us, and all of us have need to be grateful for the services of all others.
1I Corinthians 12:14, 2 1.
September 02, 1956
Broadcast Number 1,411