Teeter-Totter

One of the great things about recess when I was a wee lad of 1st or 2nd grade was the teeter-totter. You might have called it a see-saw, but we called them teeter-totters. Now you could use them alone, walk up the center and try and balance yourself and teeter-totter in the middle, but the true object was to be a team. You would pair up with someone, choose opposite sides and then while one was up, the other was down and vice-a-versa. A recess full of fun packed into a board mounted on pipe.

Now the teeter-totter was fun until your partner got the idea to send you high up to the top and then slide off the back of his/her seat, releasing all the weight on their end at once and sending you crashing to the ground on your rump with a loud thump if you didn't have your legs ready to absorb the impact. It hurts to take one in the seat the pants like that and many of us took a few and inflicted likewise on our unsuspecting classmates.

So it goes with the Body of Christ

Romans 12: 4-8 (NIV): "Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully"

We are often at opposite ends of the teeter-totter that is the body of Christ and balancing on that fulcrum that is the Holy Spirit we are both being pulled down by the gravity of temptation and yet only when we are working together, from our opposite ends, can we raise the other up when they are down and keep both of our rumps off the ground. When I bail out on you, you are like to crash and likewise when you do the same to me so we both need to stay on our end. It is so much the better when we work together toward the common goal