I woke up Friday morning last week and wanted to scream.  The sun was lighting up our bedroom window and it was the most painful thing I’d felt in a long time.  My left eye was injured, and light of any kind would cause a shooting pain like I’d rarely felt before.  Worse than that?  I couldn’t use my right eye either.  Even though there was nothing wrong with my right eye whenever it was faced with light of any intensity the left eye would hurt.  My doctor explained this as a sympathetic reaction.  When one pupil contracts or dilates in reaction to light the other will react just the same as if it was hit by light.  Put simply, if you put a patch over one eye and shine a light in the other, both eyes will act like there’s a light shined on them.  By the way, sometimes that hurts.

According to Romans 12 the church is a body.  It hard to find a more fitting analog.  If we are a body, properly fit together, then we’ll also have sympathetic reactions with each other.  When one of us hurts, we all hurt.  When one of us gets good news, we all get good news.  When one of us gets bad news, we all get bad news.  Specifically, in Romans 12:15 Paul tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weepwith those who weep.  In other words; act like a body.  By the way, sometimes that hurts.

But most of the time it feels great.