Restoration starts with a gesture. Someone stepping out of the well-worn ruts of distance and disagreement and offering an opportunity to change the way things are.
Perhaps it’s a gift? (A neatly wrapped vinyl with a post-it note, maybe?) Or, perhaps it’s simply a hand extended, an earnest question that opens a conversation, a smile.
Relationships are at the heart of our existence: with ourselves, with the people around us, with the world we live in, and with the God we either look to or deny.
From our very first breath, at our most instinctive level, we have an inbuilt longing for closeness with others. We reach for our parents and, from that moment, we are impacted and changed by either the nourishment of the love we receive or by the devastation of rejection and separation. And, as the moments tick by and our circle of interactions widen, we spend the rest of our lives grappling with issues, from tiny to overwhelming, that come out of these.
Belonging. Security. Confidence. Provision. We experience or lack all of these things because of relationships.
And they impact every area of our lives.
If John Lewis’s Christmas commercial moves us, it is possibly because we all have felt, on some level at some point, the loss and discomfort of a fractured relationship. Every one of us has experienced the pain of distance between us and another person (or group of people). Or God. Each of us has a personal memory either of the healing of a restored connection or of the deep ache of ongoing or even irreparable brokenness in a relationship.
Differences in opinion and worldview. Struggles for power. Fear of exclusion or of not having enough. Frustration at not being heard and understood. Bitterness at what has been lost in the past.
From within one household right the way to a global level, finding our shared points of connection – in spite of whatever differences we may have – are the key to rebuilding peace and hope. They are the starting point for ending conflict and poverty.
Small acts of relationship restoration
In John Lewis’s Christmas ad, it’s a small gift that says ‘I see you’ which changes the course of things, turning hurting but loving hearts back toward one another.
In other situations, it might start with something as simple as a volleyball match organised between young women of different faiths who would never usually interact with each other.
Or planting trees and rehabilitating a park where families from diverse groups can spend time together, just chatting and letting the children play.
These are just two of the ways that Tearfund, alongside our local partner in two communities in Iraq, has been working to restore relationships as part of a project called JISRA*.
‘I learned that peace does not necessarily require large-scale steps but can be achieved through small ones, like accepting one another and sharing respect,’ says a young woman who has been part of the project. ‘In this way, together we can become active members in building our community.’
