Interdependence

As Nadia Abdullah and Judith Allonby recently found out, online matchmaking is not just for finding romance. After passing the background checks, the two were recently paired on the platform Nesterly, which matches compatible residents for mutually beneficial intergenerational housing arrangements.

Abdullah, 25, found the site during her attempts to find affordable housing prior to her graduation from Tufts University. She said, “It was a little frustrating because I couldn’t find anything in my budget.”

Allonby, 64, was looking for some companionship in her family home after both parents had passed away. Through their pairing on Nesterly, Abdullah began paying a modest rent for the first floor of the house in exchange for helping out with housework and errands.

Abdullah said, “It was perfect. Judith has become like my family.” And Allonby agrees. “It’s really nice to have somebody else around. Nadia brings a different atmosphere and energy than I had with my 88-year-old mother.”

According to Pew Research Center, multigenerational households are on the rise, having quadrupled in scope since the 1970s. According to a recent study, more than 60 million American adults live with other adults from a different generation--about 18% of Americans overall.

Donna Butts is executive director of Generations United. She said, “Sometimes, just having somebody around to walk the dog and have a meal with a few times a week can make a huge difference for an older adult.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In a similar way, the family of God has no age boundaries. God calls us to love and welcome those who come across our paths.

For fifteen months journalist Sebastian Junger followed a single platoon of U.S. soldiers stationed in a dangerous part of Afghanistan. Living and working in the midst of a warzone made Junger realize how much the soldiers had to rely on each other. What you do or don't do as a soldier affects everyone else in your platoon. Junger writes:

Margins were so small and errors potentially so catastrophic that every soldier had a kind of de facto authority to reprimand others—in some cases even officers. And because combat can hinge on [small] details, there was nothing in a soldier's daily routine that fell outside the group's purview. Whether you tied your shoes or cleaned your weapon or drank enough water or secured your night vision gear were all matters of public concern and so were open to public scrutiny.

Once I watched a private accost another private whose bootlaces were trailing on the ground. Not that he cared what it looked like, but if something happened out there—and out there, everything happened suddenly—the guy with the loose laces couldn't be counted on to keep his feet at a crucial moment. It was the other man's life he was risking, not just his own …. There was no such thing as personal safety out there; what happened to you happened to everyone.

God said from the beginning: "It is not good for man to be alone." Data collected from 148 studies, involving more than 300,000 people, conducted over three decades, shows just how true this verdict from God is. People who have no social life are 50 percent more likely to die early than those who are well connected. Those who socialize regularly with family and friends live an average of 3.7 years longer than those who lead isolated lives. Burt Uchino, the professor who led the research at the Universities of Utah and North Carolina, said friends and supportive people encourage us to "have better health practices, see a doctor, exercise more. They may also help you directly by making you feel you have something to live for." Professor Uchino went on to say that the emotional support people receive from those close to them can help put their problems into perspective. "By having a secure relationship and feeling loved," says Uchino, "people live much more secure, calm lives."

Max Lucado writes in "Push Each Other to the Top”:

Every Thursday during a Young Life summer camp, four hundred students make the fourteen-thousand-foot climb up Colorado's Mount Chrysolite. Several Young Life leaders and I walk with them.

[On one of those trips], somewhere around the number four thousand, [a student named] Matthew decided to call it quits. I coaxed him, begged him, negotiated a plan with him: thirty steps of walking, sixty seconds of resting. Finally, we stood within a thousand feet of the peak. But the last stretch of the trail rose up as straight as a fireman's ladder.

We got serious. Two guys came up beside Matt, each taking an arm. I pushed from the rear. We all but dragged Matt past the timberline and to the awesome view at the top.

That's when we heard the applause. Four hundred campers on the crest of Mount Chrysolite gave Matt a standing ovation. As I slumped down to rest, a thought streamrolled my way: There it is, Max, a perfect picture of my plan. Do all you can to push each other to the top. Was this a message from God? Well, it does sound like something he'd say.

Questions can make hermits out of us, driving us into hiding. Yet the cave has no answers. Christ distributes courage through community; he dissipates doubts through fellowship. He never deposits all knowledge in one person but distributes pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to many. When you interlock your understanding with mine, and we share our discoveries, when we mix, mingle, confess and pray, Christ speaks.