Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting brief snippets from Randy Frazee's book, "Making Room for Life: Trading Chaotic Lifestyles for Connected Relationships." These will be brief thoughts from the book that I found particularly challenging and thought-provoking.“So much of the richness of life comes in the journey to the event, not in the event itself. One of the major problems with linear friendships in surburban America is that the relational opportunities in the journey to another place are eliminated. Each individual, isolated in an automobile, makes his or her way to the event, and thus so much is lost. The sayings of the Solomon offer us this wise counsel: “Don not go to your brother’s house when disaster strikes you – better a neighbor nearby than a brother far way” (Proverbs 27:10). In today’s vernacular, Solomon is saying, “If you’re having trouble and you have to get in your car to find help, you’re in more trouble than you know.” (49-50)
“This is the vision presented in “The Connecting Church which recommends that we move beyond commuting to small group events in search of “contrived community” to living in a circle of relationships with the people nearby – the place where community can truly happen. How is this possible given the hectic lives we now life? The counsel presented at the beginning of the chapter is here applied. We prioritize, consolidate, eliminate, and simplify the linear worlds we have to the best of our ability, to the measure of our faith, and to the quota of our courage in order to create a circle of life.” (50)
"Therapist Will Miller, author of Refrigerator Rights, observes, “If you talk to any therapist today, the problems we see mostly are mood disorders: depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social detachment. As blessed as we are as Americans, as prosperous as we are, there’s all this depression. So where is it coming from? I’m convinced it’s rooted in the loss of ‘refrigerator rights’ relationships. This is a delightfully clever way of describing a different kind of relationship. A person with refrigerator rights is someone who can come into our home and feel comfortable going to our refrigerator to make a sandwhich without our permission. Miller argues that too many Americans suffer mentally and emotionally because they have too few of these kinds of relationships.” (51)
“This is the vision presented in “The Connecting Church which recommends that we move beyond commuting to small group events in search of “contrived community” to living in a circle of relationships with the people nearby – the place where community can truly happen. How is this possible given the hectic lives we now life? The counsel presented at the beginning of the chapter is here applied. We prioritize, consolidate, eliminate, and simplify the linear worlds we have to the best of our ability, to the measure of our faith, and to the quota of our courage in order to create a circle of life.” (50)
"Therapist Will Miller, author of Refrigerator Rights, observes, “If you talk to any therapist today, the problems we see mostly are mood disorders: depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social detachment. As blessed as we are as Americans, as prosperous as we are, there’s all this depression. So where is it coming from? I’m convinced it’s rooted in the loss of ‘refrigerator rights’ relationships. This is a delightfully clever way of describing a different kind of relationship. A person with refrigerator rights is someone who can come into our home and feel comfortable going to our refrigerator to make a sandwhich without our permission. Miller argues that too many Americans suffer mentally and emotionally because they have too few of these kinds of relationships.” (51)
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