...wHoleness

It’s easy to think of our lives as compartmentalised.

We are children, friends, parents, colleagues, lovers, partners…and some of these compartments link together and others feel quite separate. Visualising and getting in touch with this thought came about with a vision of an Orange. Bizarrely appropriate at this time of year when I have a Christingle, where the orange symbolises the physical wholeness of the world.

So wholeness or maybe even holeness is something I have been thinking about.

The uniqueness of citrus fruits is within their segments. Beneath the skin is a whole constructed of many segments, never do you peel an orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit to find that one segment is missing. Never is there a hole in the whole. Some segments are bigger or smaller than others but there is never a gap. The fruit simply couldn’t or wouldn’t grow without being complete.

The same is true of us. Our wholeness is key if we are to fully grow.

Whilst it is OK that some segments of our lives are more important than others and that some join together whilst others are remote from each other, I don’t think God ever wants us to have a gap in our wholeness. Perhaps there is one area of our lives that we have simply shut down to, where there is a hole that we are not growing within.

I know this is true for me.

Our spirit, soul and body are constantly interacting together, as a whole, as a complete person.  That’s the way God designed us.

In the bible, Paul refers to man being spirit, soul and body.  We are not beings of separate and distinctively different components, but a whole person.  We are a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body.  All of these aspects are inextricably interwoven. To be whole, to be complete, each aspect of a person must be tended to & growing.

It’s impossible to achieve growth and wholeness in our own strength and abilities. Transformation that brings a sense of wholeness can only be done by listening to the one who created us – God himself.

My growth and wholeness is being suspended while I don’t tend to my missing segment. God has spoken into my hole and shown me that I shouldn’t close or ignore the gap and I’m listening .