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• Illustration: A newspaper carried a note of apology from a young grandson to his grandma; though he was sorry for wrecking her house, he asked if he could come again.
• Our greatest fear is not that we will be inconvenienced, but that we will be left alone.
• Illustration: The greatest fear among cancer patients is that they will be abandoned when they most need their loved ones.
• Illustration: The philosopher Spinoza said, "Man is a social animal, and everyone out there needs someone else."

• Illustration: Edward Sanford Martin's poem "My Name Is Legion" describes the many selves living within each one of us.
• Maybe the reason we can't reach out to someone else is because we don't even know which self of ours to share.

• Maybe we're afraid that if we start opening ourselves up to others, what we show will turn them off and send them packing.
• Illustration: A girl who seemed to have it all together was secretly terrified of anyone truly getting to know her.
• If we are afraid of rejection, we may be crying for help, but we don't really want anyone to come running.

• Maybe it's the cruelty in our own hearts that keeps others away.
• Illustration: German philosopher Schopenhauer likened the human race to porcupines in winter.
• Illustration: Poet William Blake said, "Cruelty has a human heart, and jealousy a human face."

• The apostle Paul believed that community begins in something he called the body of Christ.
• Illustration: Bodies are amazing things; each organ maintains the health of the body without having to be told to.
• If you want to find community, if you want a place where you fit in, come to the body of Christ.
• Sadly, even the church lets us down: it can become a reflection of the splintered world around us—power, politics, and wary strangers.
• Illustration: Charles V pondered why the six clocks in his house could not be programmed to chime at exactly the same time, then wondered why the six nations of the Holy Roman Empire couldn't live in harmony.
• The body of Christ will only exist in harmony if all parts are connected to the same head and source—Jesus Christ.

• Community should be a reality not out of our ability to get along, but out of our ability to be connected to the same source of thought and power.
• Community happens when the power that drives each of us is the single power of the Holy Spirit.
• Illustration: A legend called "The Rabbi's Gift" tells how a monastery was transformed into a loving community by each member choosing to view the others as the Messiah.

• It's not really important for us whether the church at Corinth became a living example of the body of Christ or not; what's important is whether we will choose to be.