I don’t know why this is so hard. But we struggle to build sturdy bridges from our lonely little islands to the lonely little islands of people around us. Sure, we like our privacy, but God also put affinity for other island dwellers in our souls. The old English poet John Donne said, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Humanity is not a frictionless network. There needs to be contact. From Donne’s time to the present, we have experimented with things like handshakes, hugs, and Instagram to relate to others because we can’t survive in isolation from one another. Donne continued, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” We are in this life together until we are no longer in it at all. So “above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). It takes faith and it takes hope not to be an island. And it takes love because love never fails. 

God sent Jesus to be part of the main. He was God incarnate, which is also love incarnate. That is how God reconnected with us and showed us how he wants us to connect with others. The distance between us and others isn’t a moat. It is a place for a bridge, and the bridge is love.