Leaders are usually lonely in a crowd, even while they are attempting to the lead the crowd toward great and worthy goals. Our loneliness usually stems from hiding our life from others. Our culture teaches us to hide, to bluff, to pad our resume, and to never show weakness. In fact, the further up the ladder we climb the more we hide. We have more to lose as we climb the ladders of our success.

“You can’t walk in the light alone.” I often use this phrase to describe one of the values and benefits to being in a forum with peers. That little phrase has a great deal of meaning to me these days.

Happy is the man or woman who finds friends who offer mercy, grace, and forgiveness when personal darkness is revealed. A Proverb states, “He who confesses and forsakes his sin will find mercy but he who covers his sin will not prosper” (Proverbs 28:13).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who resisted the Nazi regime and ultimately gave his life in that effort, wrote, “In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community…” –Life Together… Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Have a Great New Year!

Jon Sharpe