Welcome to the Infinitely Precious podcast produced by Infinitely Precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and it is good to be with you today to share a thought. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. Today, I wanna talk about how connected we all are. I think we forget that sometimes.

Oh, we feel connected because, you know, perhaps to our family, to our immediate neighbors, and other kinds of things like that. But, as a person who follows the path of Jesus, I've come to believe that our connectedness extends far beyond, those we can see immediately, even beyond national borders. It covers all of this world, goes beyond human beings, it goes all the way to the planet itself. We are connected. Many people watch these moments.

Probably lots of people, at least some people I don't even know. And so it may seem unusual that the way I begin or welcome most of these moments of thought is to say, hello, beloved. And I don't know if you've ever thought about it or pondered that word that I use, but I know that you and I are connected. One of the stories Jesus told the parables was, in Matthew 25. It's about sheep and goats, the ones who cared for the least of these, whoever the least are, those imprisoned, those who are sick, those who are naked, and, hungry, all of those folks, and Jesus identified with them.

When we do good things for those who are hungry or any of those, folks. We do it to we we do it to Christ. We do it to Christ. And by a deeper implication, I want to say that I think that that text really points to something beyond that about how when you are hurting, when you are sad, when you feel alone, like perhaps one of the least of these in some way, then, I am too. I'm connected to you.

So for instance, last, a year ago in October, when I heard about the Hamas attack on Israel and the people who were killed and some who were taken hostage, I felt that because there was a sense of connection with those folks. Likewise, over the coming months, as I saw, the retaliation in Gaza, I felt connected to the Palestinians, more than 40,000 that have been killed, to the people of Ukraine, and, what happens there. The people of Sudan. Most recently, when I think about the people who were affected by hurricane Helene in in Appalachia up through Florida and Georgia, bits of Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia. People whose homes washed away, whose livelihoods changed, who lost family members, people who survived that and who are seeking to recover.

I can't be whole as long as they're not. I may think I can be, but what my understanding of what Jesus was teaching says is that my connection is much bigger than just to myself and what happens to me. It's to what happens to all others, and I am lessened by anything that lessens another. I am built up by the things that build up others. So when I feel connected, when I say beloved, it's because at some deep level beyond any surface, beyond skin color, religion, or nationality, beyond gender, or sexuality, or any of those kinds of lines that sometimes we try to divide ourselves by.

Beyond all of that, I am deeply connected to people when they suffer and when they succeed. And likewise, the same is true for you when I suffer. I see pangs of suffering that happened, to friends and others. Oftentimes, it appears in a Facebook feed that starts something like, I'm calling on all my prayer warriors, or I have lost someone dear, and, or I am celebrating someone who is gone. Those moments are connecting moments that remind me of of how finite I am, remind me of how connected I am to those folks and that their pain becomes in some way mine.

Certainly not at the same level, that, each one of those who are suffering experiences, but at some level, yes. Yes. So, you know, it's my call to respond to respond to a hurting world and do something about that. So that connectedness does a couple of things for me. It reminds me of my own common humanity initially.

When I see the world hurting, when I see happy stories about rescuing puppies and kittens, and they buoy me up, I am connected. So it reminds me of my connection. But at the same time seeing those things and recognizing the connectedness calls me to action. It calls me to do something about it. It calls me, initially almost always, it calls me to lift those people up in my heart, in my prayer time, in my meditations, to dedicate a moment of my time to that pain, that suffering, that sadness, that struggle, that joy, that success, that to be connected to that, to feel that connection, and then respond.

And so whether the limit of my ability to respond may be the prayer I lift or if it calls me out to do something more than that, to say something, to, act on something, to give something away, to open a conversation. Every opportunity in our lives in this connected world in which we live is an opportunity to recognize that we need each other, that we are connected to each other, that we are part of one another. And that because we are part of one another, we must find a way beyond these things that divide us into tribes and and nations and all of the pieces that divide us up. Must find a way to build a bridge beyond that because we are so connected to people all over the world who are like us and in some ways not like us, and yet at the very core of who they are, they are a part of us and we of them. So I want to invite you and me today and the days ahead to remember how connected we are, that the things that we say and do matter, and that the way we respond to people who are struggling matters.

We have the opportunity to be kind, to be patient, to be good, to share from our best and not from our worst, to find ways to make things better, to do all the good that we can, and to do no harm, to do no harm, and seek out the divine in all these places, remembering how very connected we are to one another. So my friends, you are connected. Beloved, you are connected, and you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift that you are. Until the next time I see you.