Solutions

In sports it can take just one addition to “complete” the team.  The impact of new players on a team isn’t predictable, however when one gets it right – wow!  The team stepped up to a new level of play.  I’ve been on several teams when this happened.  My earliest experience was not easy.  The team sport was crew, eight rowers plus a cox in a slim boat.  Ironically we had struggled with a pool of twelve candidates for over two weeks trying to get the right combination in the boat.  Nothing quite worked.  At the last minute I was substituted.  The boat won the race and set a team record in the process.
 
Life can be a struggle wherever we live and in whatever circumstances.  With job or without, financially secure or struggling to makes ends meet, secure in a family or group of friends or trying to understand where you fit in life, one is always trying to find and hold onto a better solution.  The process isn’t easy.  There are no magical solutions.  Sometimes the obvious answer is really the answer.
 
We want to believe we can do it on our own.  It can be difficult to accept the benefits of relationships, even with those we love!  We participate for awhile and then find ourselves breaking free to do something on our own.  While some things work, success may come, goals and missions achieved, we know, or at least hope, in our hearts that there is more.  We can do better!  We can scale greater heights!  We can, but how.
 
The obvious is the answer, God.  Yet it isn’t the God of institutions or our parents.  It is the God found in a personal relationship.  “For a child has been born—for us!  The gift of a son—for us!  He'll take over the running of the world.  His names will be: Amazing Counselor, Strong God, Eternal Father, Prince of Wholeness.” (Isaiah 9.6)  The presence in the present is through Divinity’s Spirit, always here, always ours, and always full of hope, strength, and compassion.