Sportswriter Rick Reilly gave rookie professional athletes this advice: ‘Stop thumping your chest. The line blocked, the quarterback threw you a perfect spiral while getting his head knocked off, and the good receiver drew the double coverage. Get over yourself!’

During twenty-seven years coaching his ten-time national-champion UCLA basketball teams, Coach John Wooden reminded them, ‘It takes ten hands to score a basket.’

His message lines up perfectly with Solomon’s counsel: ‘Two are better than one’! No one realises his or her best potential on their own. God’s Word and life itself teach us that living is designed to be a team sport. In the very beginning, God established this principle: ‘It is not good for the man [or woman] to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’ (Genesis 2:18 NIV)

Being the ‘lone ranger’ was never God’s intention for us. Loneliness is a killer. Companionship is the elixir of life. In Ecclesiastes 4:1–12, Solomon talks about the value of human relationships in a challenging and difficult world. And teacher Philip De Courcy tells us that Biblical wisdom embraces ‘a theology of we’ and ‘rejects a theology of me’ (see Philippians 2:4). To win in life, we need to commit ourselves to:

(a) resisting the ‘go-it-alone’ spirit that often characterises our culture;

(b) cultivating meaningful relationships and learning to treasure our friends; (c)

staying closely connected to the members of the body of Christ;

(d) reaching out to the lonely and the fallen; and

(e) going out of our way to demonstrate the nature of real friendship (see Proverbs 17:17; Hebrews 10:24–25; Luke 10:25–37; John 15:13).

Blazing your own trail is a dead-end street. Life shared is life fully lived!