Body of Christ

In the winter of 1909, a young man trudged through the streets of Vienna..His beard was unkempt. His coat—bought at a pawnshop—was threadbare, and his shoes looked ready to fall apart. He had no home, no destination, and no community. The man was Adolf Hitler.

He drifted from flophouse to flophouse, sleeping in doorways when he had no money for a bed. He sold crude postcards he painted for tourists and often went hungry. He was consumed by a longing to belong. It is almost impossible to imagine that this homeless drifter would, within three decades, command one of the most murderous regimes in history. But Hitler’s years of vagrancy—what he later called the period when he “grew hard”—offer a chilling lesson about what happens when human beings are severed from home, place, and spiritual community.

From 1908 to 1913, Hitler was rootless in every sense. He had been rejected twice by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. His mother was dead. He had no family, friends, no trade, no church, and no sense of purpose. He was spiritually adrift.
And in that homelessness, he found something dark to cling to. Vienna’s toxic antisemitic culture offered him an explanation for his suffering and, more importantly, a community defined by resentment. It gave him identity through blame and belonging through hatred.

We were made for place, for people, and for purpose. When those bonds are severed we become desperate who will cling to anything that offers identity, even if it is monstrous.

But the Church remains a home, calling to wanderers: Come in. Find rest. Find belonging. Find hope. The Church is the answer to nomadic modernity.

For sake of safety, let's say his name is Andrew. He was a brother in our congregation from Muslim-dominated Uzbekistan. He described the threats on his life when he became a Christian. Among other things, his uncle pressed a knife to his side, demanding he turn away from his faith in Christ.

Jahong told us, “Before Christ I didn’t like my family. But when I saw Christ and Christ transformed my heart, Christ give me big love for my family, for my parents. I was really a good son. I obeyed my parents and I love them with Jesus’ love, but [even though] I loved them they hated me…. I love my family, my brother and sisters, but they beat me, they hate me and it was hard to understand. I said, ‘Oh God, I am losing one valuable thing—my family—and it was very hard to understand.’ But God said, ‘I will give you a new family.’”

From meerkats to macaques, social animals tend to live longer, take more time to reach maturity, and have more extended reproductive periods than their more solitary counterparts, according to research from the University of Oxford.

However, living in social groups comes with clear tradeoffs. On one hand, social animals can share resources, protect each other from predators, and help raise offspring together. On the other hand, they face increased risks of disease transmission, competition for resources, and social conflicts. Yet despite these challenges, scientists say the benefits of social living appear to outweigh the costs.

Rather than simply categorizing animals as either social or non-social, the researchers developed a novel spectrum of sociality with distinct levels. At one end are solitary animals like tigers and cheetahs, which spend most of their time alone except for breeding. In the middle are “gregarious” animals like wildebeest and zebras that form loose groups. At the far end of the spectrum are highly social species like elephants, most primates, and honeybees, which form stable, organized groups with complex social structures.

The findings have particular relevance in our post-COVID era, where humans have experienced firsthand the impacts of social isolation.

Lead author Rob Salguero-Gómez says, “This study has demonstrated that species that are more social display longer life spans and reproductive windows than more solitary species. In a post-COVID era, the impacts of isolation have been quite tangible to humans. The research demonstrates that being more social is associated with some tangible benefits.”

For most of the last 30 years, the story of religion in America has been a pretty steady one: a constant, and consistent, drop in religious affiliation every year. Starting in the 1990s, the share of Americans who identified as Christian, or identified with any religion at all, began to drop precipitously. At the same time, those with no religious affiliation — nicknamed “nones” — began to spike.

That trend might be ending. Over the last five years, the share of Americans who are “nones” has stabilized at roughly 30 percent, across multiple tracking surveys — largely because of one group: Zoomers.

Sometime around or after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, young Americans began to find, or at least retain, religious belief at higher rates than previous generations.

Gen Z seems to be the key. Recently, surveys have found that Zoomers are the only generation not losing their religious affiliation. Why? There’s no unifying explanation for this trend, but it extends beyond the United States. And that suggests that there might be some structural reasons Gen Z is rediscovering faith. Something about post-Covid seems to be bringing youth back to Christianity, specifically, but also to religion in general.

There are three potential explanations:

1. Loneliness: Gen Z seeks community and connection in faith to combat widespread feelings of isolation.

2. Distrust of Institutions: Turning to religion as a countercultural response to declining trust in government and mainstream culture.

3. Political and Social Shifts: Young men are becoming more religious and politically conservative, while young women favor more liberal faiths, reflecting broader generational divides.

In an issue of CT magazine, E.F. Gregory shares the following story of how a persecuted pastor in China prayed for her during the devastating fires in Southern California:

On January 7, 2025, a series of devastating wildfires erupted in the Los Angeles area. As I drove home to Alhambra, strong winds and sirens filled the air, and flames were visible in the mountains. As I drove, strong winds threatened to push my car to the curb. Broken tree branches littered the streets. The Eaton Fire was igniting near Altadena, a suburb north of my location. The community of Altadena would soon be severely affected by the fire.

The Los Angeles wildfires were catastrophic, killing at least 29 people, destroying nearly 17,000 structures, and displacing over 100,000 individuals. The sheer scale of the disaster is overwhelming, making it difficult to know how to respond.

A phone call with Pastor Zhang from eastern China offered a different perspective. While facing persecution and challenges in his ministry, Zhang relies heavily on prayer and a network of believers. When he learned about the fires near my home, he prayed for my family and our community.

Zhang’s thoughtful, empathetic questions surprised me. After all, we were meeting to talk about how he felt to know that Christians outside of China are interceding for his community. Instead, Zhang was remembering and praying for me.

Zhang's empathy was striking, especially given the isolation Chinese Christians often feel from the global Christian community. He emphasized that prayer unites believers across distances and cultures. "We pray for all parts of the world," he said, including the California fires, asking for God's mercy and grace. For Zhang, the fires were an opportunity to connect the struggles of his church with those of mine.

Recent years have been particularly challenging for Chinese Christians due to increased persecution. Zhang said, “In the latter half of the last century, the Chinese church was like an orphan, separated from the family of the universal church.”

Despite these challenges, Zhang believes prayer is a mutual act that strengthens relationships between believers worldwide. Zhang prayed that the disaster in Los Angeles would bring American Christians together to demonstrate God's care for the affected communities.

As we grieve our losses, I’m comforted and humbled to know that the persecuted church is interceding on our behalf. This is why I believe that praying for the church in China is more important than ever. When they suffer, I also suffer. But prayer does not move in only one direction. If I focus only on caring for my Chinese brothers and sisters without allowing them to care for me, we are not in real relationship. We need to pray for one another.

Huy Fong Foods’ founder and owner, David Tran, created the sauce we know as sriracha in his L.A. kitchen as a refugee from Vietnam. Starting with nothing but a recipe and condensed milk cans full of 100 ounces gold that he smuggled out of Vietnam, Tran built Huy Fong Foods over the next four decades into a behemoth that was the No. 3 hot sauce brand in America, behind only Tabasco and Frank’s Red Hot.

Sriracha hot sauce has been copied, counterfeited, and even taken into outer space. Tran didn’t spend a dime on marketing, but his product found fans across the country and was celebrated by chefs and celebrities like Miley Cyrus. The bottle could even be found on the International Space Station.

Then a catastrophic disagreement between Tran and Craig Underwood, the California pepper farmer who had grown the red jalapeños for Huy Fong’s sauce for 28 years, created a crisis for the business. The breakup of Huy Fong Foods and Underwood Ranches, stemming from a disagreement over payment that erupted in November 2016, led to shortages of Huy Fong’s “rooster sauce.” This left millions of fans often unable to get their hands on their favorite condiment. The rift decimated both men’s companies—leaving the farmer with thousands of acres of pepper fields but no customer; and the sauce-maker with a 650,000-square-foot factory but not enough chili peppers to keep it running consistently.

Since then, dozens of other srirachas have flooded the market amid the original’s scarcity, including versions from the likes of Texas Pete and Roland’s and generics from various supermarket chains. And the No. 1 hot sauce brand in America seized the opportunity created by the shortage of Huy Fong’s sauce to dominate the category that Tran created: Tabasco had the bestselling sriracha in the country for the second half of 2023, pulling ahead even of the original rooster sauce.

The sad saga of the two men who created one of America's favorite condiments feels like a kind of fable, or cautionary tale, showing how fragile one product’s dominance of a category can be, no matter how beloved it is.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Just as discord can splinter a business and erode its effectiveness, so disagreements within a church can be equally devastating. Unresolved conflicts have the potential to shatter unity, undoing the hard work, and cause harm to its reputation.

Fifteen-year-old Aaron was going through a dark time at school. He’d fallen out with his friends, leaving him feeling isolated and alone.

At the time, it seemed like the end of the world. “I used to cry every night,” said Aaron. Eventually, Aaron turned to his computer for comfort. Through it, he found someone that was available around the clock to respond to his messages, listen to his problems, and help him move past the loss of his friend group. That “someone” was an AI chatbot named Psychologist.

The chatbot’s description says that it’s “Someone who helps with life difficulties.” Its profile picture is a woman in a blue shirt with a blonde bob, perched on the end of a couch with a clipboard clasped in her hands and leaning forward, as if listening intently.

A single click on the picture opens up an anonymous chat box, which allows people like Aaron to “interact” with the bot by exchanging DMs. Its first message is always the same. “Hello, I’m a psychologist. What brings you here today?”

“It’s not like a journal, where you’re talking to a brick wall,” Aaron said. “It really responds.”

Character.AI is an AI chatbot service launched in 2022. Character.AI’s website attracts 3.5 million daily users who spend an average of two hours a day using the platform’s AI-powered chatbots. Some of its most popular bots include characters from books, films, and video games, like Raiden Shogun from Genshin Impact or a teenaged version of Voldemort from Harry Potter.

Aaron is one of millions of young people, many of whom are teenagers, who make up the bulk of Character.AI’s user base. More than a million of them gather regularly online on platforms like Reddit to discuss their interactions with the chatbots. The competitions over who has racked up the most screen time are just as popular as posts about hating reality, finding it easier to speak to bots than to speak to real people, and even preferring chatbots over other human beings. Some users say they’ve logged 12 hours a day on Character.AI, and posts about addiction to the platform are common.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Since young people describe feeling addicted to chatbots, they might find themselves sitting in their rooms talking to computers more often than communicating with real people. It raises questions about how the AI boom and what the future could hold if teenagers—and society at large—become more emotionally reliant on bots.

The Bible teaches us that it is not good for us to be alone, we need others. Researchers now know that we are wired to be with and interact with others.

Our culture teaches us to focus on personal uniqueness, but at a deeper level we barely exist as individual organisms. Our brains are built to help us function as members of a tribe. We are part of that tribe even when we are by ourselves, whether listening to music (that other people created), watching a basketball game on television (our own muscles tensing as the players run and jump), or preparing a spreadsheet for a sales meeting (anticipating the boss’s reactions). Most of our energy is devoted to connecting with others.

There's been a lot of research about stress and here's the bad news: it's really bad for your body and your brain. Dr. Rajita Sinha imaged the brains of 100 participants and found that profoundly stressful events (not the normal, day-to-day kinds of stress) can actually shrink the part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex.

In addition, she and her team found that it’s not individual traumatic events that have the most impact, but the cumulative effect of a lifetime’s worth of stress that might cause the most dramatic changes in brain volume.

That area of the brain helps manage our emotions, impulse control, and personal interactions. Smaller brain volumes in these centers have also been linked to depression and other mood disorders such as anxiety.

Dr. Sinha said, “The brain is plastic, and there are ways to bring back and perhaps reverse some of the effects of stress and rescue the brain somewhat.” Relieving stress through exercise or meditation is an important way to diffuse some of the potentially harmful effects it can have on the brain. Maintaining strong social and emotional relationships can also help, to provide perspective on events of experiences that may be too overwhelming to handle on your own.

So, these overstressed individuals may not be able to "just get over it." They may need large amounts of love, patience, and prayer from their church community.

Giant redwoods are the most massive individual trees on earth. The redwood can grow to 270 feet tall and 25 feet in diameter. You might think that something that huge must have an incredible root system that goes down deep in order to stand that tall. This is not the case at all. The redwood tree has no tap root and remarkably shallow roots—only five or ten feet deep.

It seems to violate the laws of physics that they can stay upright for hundreds – even thousand – of years. That is, until you know one more fact: the redwoods grow in thick groves because their shallow roots are intertwined, and over time, fused together. They start out as individuals and become one with others as they mature and grow.

So, beneath the surface of these incredible statuesque trees are roots like an army of men who have their arms interlocked and supporting each other. They are preventing the adversaries of life from knocking each other down.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Holy Spirit, indwelling; Paraclete - Individual believers are supported and strengthened by the indwelling Holy Spirit who stabilizes us against temptation and the trials of life; 2) Body of Christ; Community; Support - The mutual support of our brothers and sisters in Christ can keep us upright when we otherwise might fall.

Most people continue to use AI programs such as ChatGPT, Bing, and Google Bard for mundane tasks like internet searches and text editing. But of the roughly 103 million US adults turning to generative chatbots in recent months, an estimated 13% occasionally did it to simply “have a conversation with someone.”

According to the Consumer Reports August 2023 survey results, a vast majority of Americans (69%) either did not regularly utilize AI chat programs in any memorable way. Those that did, however, overwhelmingly opted to explore OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Most AI users asked their programs to conduct commonplace tasks, such as answering questions in lieu of a traditional search engine, writing content, summarizing longer texts, and offering ideas for work or school assignments. Despite generative AI’s relative purported strength at creating and editing computer code, just 10% of those surveyed recounted using the technology to do so. However, 13% used it to have a conversation.

The desire for idle conversation with someone else is an extremely human, natural feeling. However, there are already signs that it’s not necessarily the healthiest of habits.

Many industry critics have voiced concerns about a potentially increasing number of people turning to technology instead of human relationships. Numerous reports in recent months highlight a growing market of AI bots explicitly marketed to an almost exclusively male audience as “virtual girlfriends.”

According to Consumer Reports survey results, an estimated 10.2 million Americans had a “conversation” with a chatbot in recent months. That’s quite a lot of people looking to gab.

How many people do you know? You’ve probably never counted. Well, now you don’t have to. Tyler McCormick has worked it out: around 600.

Or more precisely 611, according to estimates by McCormick, a professor in the statistics and sociology departments at the University of Washington. That’s a national average, but McCormick can actually compute an estimate for you, or anyone.

Asked how many close friends they have, about half of Americans say three or fewer, according to a 2021 survey. The British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, drawing on studies of the brain sizes of humans and other primates, estimates a person can only maintain about 150 relationships. The so-called “Dunbar number,” he has said, “applies to quality relationships, not to acquaintances.” A Pew Research study found adults on Facebook had an average of 338 friends on the site.

The number of people you know, without considering them friends, is probably much larger. McCormick’s definition: “that you know them and they know you by sight or by name, that you could contact them, that they live within the United States, and that there has been some contact” in the past two years.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) As a negative illustration, this could show our need to develop deeper, more intimate friendships in the body of Christ. (2) As a positive illustration, this could reveal that our support system may be stronger and broader than we realize, especially in the church.

Marvin Gaye, one of the most legendary soul singers of the 20th century, produced a series of hit recordings before his untimely death in 1984 from gun violence. But now, 40 years later, the world may experience a new set of never-heard recordings from the singer. “We can open a time capsule here and share the music of Marvin with the world," says Belgian lawyer Alex Trappeniers.

Assuming, of course, that ongoing legal proceedings can resolve their legal ownership. Trappeniers is the attorney for the family of Charles Dumolin, with whom Gaye once lived. Gaye moved to Belgium in 1981, to escape a cocaine habit he’d picked up living in London. While living with Dumolin, Gaye regained his health, and returned to recording. Some of the recordings he made during that time have never been released, and their potential value has only skyrocketed in the decades since his death.

And since Gaye gave them to the family, Trappeniers says, they should remain the family’s estate. He said, “They belong to [the family] because they were left in Belgium 42 years ago. Marvin gave it to them and said, 'Do whatever you want with it' and he never came back.”

The problem is, the Belgian law that would support the family’s custodianship of the physical tapes does not necessarily apply to intellectual property contained therein. If the heirs of the Gaye estate lay a claim to his music, the family could possess the recordings without a legal right to release them commercially. The Gaye family could legally own the music, but have no access to the tapes that contain them. Without a resolution, a legal stalemate would result.

Trappeniers says some kind of compromise and collaboration is necessary to bring Gaye’s new music to life. “I think we both benefit, the family of Marvin and the collection in the hands of [Dumolin's heirs]. If we put our hands together and find the right people in the world, the Mark Ronsons, or the Bruno Mars. ... Let's listen to this and let's make the next album.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Cooperation; Partnership; Teamwork; Unity – Much can be accomplished in any area of society where there is collaboration instead of competitiveness. This is what Paul told the Corinthian church, “I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree together, so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be united in mind and conviction” (1 Cor. 1:10-17).

In 2023, an Australian man said that a chatbot had saved his life. He was a musician who had been battling depression for decades and found companionship with an AI through an app called Replika, and everything changed. He started playing the guitar again, went clothes shopping for the first time in years, spent hours conversing with his AI companion, and laughing out loud.

Though the musician felt less alone with his AI companion, his isolation from other people was unchanged. He was adamant that he had a real friendship, but understood clearly that no person was on the other side of his screen. The effect of this bond was extraordinary.

Replika, and other chatbots, have millions of active users. People turn to these apps for all sorts of reasons. They’re looking for attention and for reassurance. But the apps’ core experience is texting as you would with a buddy. They’re talking about the petty minutiae so fundamental to being alive: “Someone stole my yogurt from the office fridge;” “I had a weird dream;” “My dachshund seems sad.”

To Replika’s users, this feels a lot like friendship. In actuality, the relationship is more like the fantasized intimacy people feel with celebrities and influencers who carefully create desirable personae for our screens. These parasocial bonds are defined by their asymmetry—one side is almost totally ignorant of the other’s existence.

Jesse Fox, a communications professor at Ohio State University, said that if we continue relationships that seem consensual and reciprocal but are not, we risk carrying bad models of interaction into the real world. Fox is particularly concerned by the habits men form through sexual relationships with AIs who never say no. “We start thinking, ‘Oh, this is how women interact. This is how I should talk to and treat a woman.’”

Sometimes the shift is more subtle—researchers and parents alike have expressed concern that barking orders at devices such as Amazon’s Echo is conditioning children to become tiny dictators. Fox said, “When we are humanizing these things, we’re also, in a way, dehumanizing people.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Church; Fellowship; Friendship - This illustration highlights the wise exhortation of Scripture to “never neglect meeting together, as is the habit of some, but encourage one another” (Heb. 10:25). God did not create us to be alone (Gen. 2:18) but to find fellowship, encouragement, and love in the company of others.

Freya India writes in an article titled “We Can't Compete With AI Girlfriends”:

Apparently, ads for AI girlfriends have been all over TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook lately. Replika, an AI chatbot originally offering mental health help and emotional support, now runs ads for spicy selfies and hot role play. Eva AI invites users to create their dream companion, while Dream Girlfriend promises a girl that exceeds your wildest desires. The app Intimate even offers hyper-realistic voice calls with your virtual partner.

This might seem niche and weird but it’s a fast-growing market. All kinds of startups are releasing romantic chatbots capable of having explicit conversations and sending sexual photos. Meanwhile, Replika alone has already been downloaded more than 20 million times. And even just one Snapchat influencer, Caryn Marjorie, makes $100,000 a week by charging users $1 a minute to chat with the AI version of herself.

Freya India notes that this technology creates “unrealistic beauty standards,” but even worse is the unrealistic emotional standards set by these apps. She continues:

Eva AI, for example, not only lets you choose the perfect face and body but customize the perfect personality, offering options like “hot, funny, bold,” “shy, modest, considerate” and “smart, strict, rational.” Create a girlfriend who is judgement-free! Who lets you hang out with your buddies without drama! Who laughs at all your jokes! “Control it all the way you want to,” promises Eva AI. Design a girl who is “always on your side,” says Replika.

The final curtain fell on the longest-running show in Broadway history after 13,981 performances. Alan Lampel has been there for roughly 13,000 of them. Mr. Lampel has done the same job in the same place for the same production from the very beginning of its existence. He takes a seat in a rolling chair at his desk in the back of the orchestra section of the Majestic Theater and plays the most important role that nobody should notice: He is the head electrician for The Phantom of the Opera.

“I’ve seen the show more than anybody on earth,” Mr. Lampel says. In fact, nobody has seen any show as many times as he sat through Phantom, which has sold 20 million tickets and earned $1.3 billion during a run that made other Broadway productions look more like high-school musicals. There was one guy keeping the lights on the whole time. And the success of any business is every bit as much about the electrician operating behind the scenes as the people taking a bow on stage.

Mr. Lampel was there at the start on January 26, 1988, and he was there at the end on April 16, 2023. That kind of longevity on Broadway is not just unprecedented. It’s unimaginable. There were colleagues he loved and bosses he didn’t. His responsibilities evolved with technology.

Others in the theater have no reason to pay attention to Mr. Lampel. But it’s those who understand Phantom the best who appreciate his contributions the most. Andrew Lloyd Webber, the show’s composer said, “Phantom has shone brighter on Broadway for 35 years because of the work of Alan Lampel.’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In life, usually the author, the speaker, and the star of the show gets the praise. But quite often, just as much praise, if not more, is due the person who quietly and faithfully works behind the scenes. This is especially true in the church, where a faithful group of people often work unnoticed to set up chairs, staff the nursery, work with the youth, using their less “spectacular” spiritual gifts who also do the work of God.

Two researchers have found that success comes with a trap: It can cause teams to rely more on their “stars.” This makes the team less adaptable and more likely to get stuck in old ways of doing things. And, ultimately, it increases the chances of failure the next time around.

They started their research by looking at pro basketball teams. They examined teams in the NBA across more than 60,000 games, spanning 34 years. Leveraging motion-tracking-camera data, they looked at how teams’ passing patterns and shot distributions changed after wins and losses. Here’s their conclusion:

We found that after winning, teams became more reliant on their star players. Teams passed the ball about 6% more to the stars, and their shot distribution skewed 15% more toward the big performers. Although doubling down is intuitive (“We want to exploit what worked before”), it ended up decreasing teams’ chances of winning the next game. The increased reliance on the star players made teams more predictable to the next opponent and easier to defend—and therefore less likely to win the game … Our studies suggest that success threatens teams.

Their recommendation? Focus on the whole team, not just the stars. The researchers concluded, “When teams succeed, the credit is less likely to focus on specific performers, but rather on the team. Likewise, blame is less likely to be attributed solely to the stars, so the team can get a clearer picture of what went wrong.”

Sounds like the body of Christ!

The unheralded Florida Atlantic University men’s basketball team made it all the way to the 2023 NCAA Final Four. How did they make it that far, especially considering they had no superstars? They relied on teamwork. Nine players on this Owls team averaged 15-plus minutes during the season, and the starting rotation has changed several times.

"We really don't care who starts as long as you just impact the game," said sophomore guard Alijah Martin, who started 20 games that season. Another starter said, "It's probably the first team I've been on where really nobody cares about their stats. I feel like across the board, any game it's just a whole bunch of selfless guys just trying to get a win."

"If you feel like it could do better for the team, why not serve and make that happen?" another player said. "There's been many opportunities and many times when guys offered up their spot for somebody else. I feel like that just reflects on the type of people we are as humans, and it shows on the court."

This selfless team spirit was exemplified early in the season between a fifth-year senior named Boyd and Michael Forrest, who lost his starting job to Boyd because of an injury. When Forrest returned, Boyd offered to give up his starting role. May declined to make the change. Where that might have affected the dynamics of some teams, FAU continued to win. Forrest said, "It doesn't really matter who starts, who finishes, it just matters about what you do on the court. Everyone's just playing to win. Everyone's playing for each other. So that's really what the difference is."

Training for a marathon is one of the most physically demanding activities you can willingly put yourself through. And when race day finally comes—after months of training and hours spent pounding the pavement—you want to finish the race strong. But sometimes, that just doesn’t happen.

A runner at the 2023 London Marathon experienced this as he worked his way towards the end of the race. In a short video shared on Reddit, a man in a black cap begins to double over and is on the verge of collapsing as other participants whizz by. But before he falls to the ground, another runner comes from behind him and grabs his arm. He’s able to hold the runner steady enough to keep going. Shortly after, another person appears on the man’s other side. Together, the three runners make their way to the finish line.

It’s unclear if the men knew each prior to the race. But when it comes to marathons, finishing with a fast time is only one component. The camaraderie—knowing thousands of other people are doing the same thing as you—is part of what makes the experience so special. And helping someone in need? Even better. Though the three guys didn’t finish first, they won that day.

You can watch the 16-second video here.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Community, Encouragement, Body of Christ—With our weaknesses and frailties, we all need the support of an encouraging community that will run beside us during the long journey of life. (2) Holy Spirit—This story also beautifully illustrates the presence of the Holy Spirit, the One called to be beside us, our Paraclete.