Don’t Try to Go It Alone

In October 1993, in the town of Worchester, Massachusetts, police found an old woman dead on her kitchen floor. This was no ordinary discovery-she had been dead four years! Police speculated she died at age seventy-three of natural causes. That’s when her bank transactions ended. How can someone be so cut off from relationships that no one even notices when he/she dies?

To some extent, it was a mistake. According to the Associated Press, four years earlier, neighbors had called authorities when they sensed something might be wrong. When the police contacted the woman’s brother, he said she had gone into a nursing home. Police told the postal service to stop delivering mail. One neighbor paid her grandson to cut the grass because the place was looking run-down. Another neighbor had the utility company come and shut off the water when a pipe froze, broke, and sent water spilling out the door.

To a great extent, though, it was not a mistake. One friend from the past said, “she did not want anyone bothering her at all. I guess she got her wish, but it’s awfully sad.”

Her brother said the family hadn’t been close since their mother died in 1979. He added, “Someone should have noticed something before now.”  The woman had lived in her house in this middle-class neighborhood for forty years, but none of her neighbors knew her well. “My heart bleeds for her,” said the woman who lived across the street. “But you can’t blame a soul. If she saw you out there, she never said, ‘Hello’ to you.”  A spirit of community only results when all of us reach out to nurture one another’s growth.

I hope you are sensing that one can’t live life completely alone. We need the example, the support, encouragement, and instruction from others. We need community to thrive.

Nishan Bakalian relates, “In the town of Stepanavan, Armenia, I met a woman whom everyone called ‘Palasan’s Wife.’ She had her own name, of course, but townspeople called her by her husband’s name to show her great honor.”

When the devastating 1988 earthquake struck Armenia, it was nearly noon, and Palasan was at work. He rushed to the elementary school where his son was a student. The façade was already crumbling, but he entered the building and began pushing children outside to safety. After Palasan had managed to help twenty-eight children out, an aftershock hit that completely collapsed the school building and killed him.

So the people of Stepanavan honor the memory of the brave man, who sacrificed his life to save others in his community, and his young widow by calling her Palasan’s wife.

Sometimes a person’s greatest honor is not who he or she is but to whom he or she is related. The highest honor of any believer is to be called a disciple of Jesus Christ, the man Who selflessly laid down His life for all people.