We have all heard the proverb so often that it has nearly lost its weight: it takes a village to raise a child. Many African children grew up inside that truth without anyone needing to explain it. An uncle corrected you in the market, a neighbour fed you before your mother came home from work, and an elder disciplined you as freely as your own parents would.
The proverb only asks half the question, though. If the village raises the child, who raises the village? Who disciples the disciplers and cares for the elders who are always pouring themselves out for everyone else? A community that only ever gives outwards, without anyone tending its own spiritual health, eventually runs dry.
Jethro’s Warning to Moses
Moses was judging every dispute in Israel by himself, from morning until evening, until his father-in-law Jethro watched him at it and spoke plainly:
“The thing that you do is not good. Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself.” (Exodus 18:17-18, NKJV)
Jethro did not question Moses’ calling. He questioned the lack of any structure around it. His answer was not to try harder or pray longer but to appoint capable men and share the load (Exodus 18:21-22). The nation needed a whole tier of people raised up to help carry what one man could not carry alone.
How the Early Church Lived
The first believers did not treat faith as a private arrangement worked out alone at home:
“Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.” (Acts 2:44-46, NKJV)
They met daily and from house to house. Paul told older believers to invest actively in younger ones, so that the older women would “admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children” (Titus 2:3-4, NKJV). Hebrews treats meeting together as essential:
“And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25, NKJV)
Paul pictures the church as one body that grows “by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share” (Ephesians 4:16, NKJV). A body where one joint does all the work while the others hold back is not healthy. One part is worn out while the rest grow weak from disuse.
Inside a Beehive
Many people picture a queen bee running the hive. In fact her role is narrow; she lays eggs. Worker bees feed the larvae, clean and guard the comb and fan their wings to control the hive’s temperature. Those workers were themselves fed as larvae by the bees before them. Every bee is raised by the colony and later helps raise the next generation, and none, once grown, is excused from feeding the young.
The Peacemaker of the Market
Think of a respected trader who for years acts as the unofficial peacemaker of his market association. He settles disputes between stalls, quietly covers a struggling trader’s rent in a bad season and prays with anyone who asks, never charging for any of it. He sometimes wonders, without bitterness, why so few ever ask after his own affairs. A verse he returns to often is “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” (Galatians 6:9, NKJV). Two traders make a quiet habit of checking on him and his family over the years. It means a great deal to him, but it is little compared with how many people he has invested in.
Then a hard season comes. Over a couple of years, some decisions he made under real pressure, none of them dishonest but mistakes all the same, catch up with him, and his business suffers badly. What he needs most is not money or rescue but the presence of the people he has stood beside for years. Very few come. Some, hearing only parts of the story, assume the worst, add to it and pass it on.
Asked later how he carried that pain, he does not pretend it did not wound him. He says he kept returning to David at Ziklag, when David’s own men, who had followed him through years of hardship, talked of stoning him after their families were taken captive. He had known the verse for years, but only in that season did he understand it from the inside:
“Now David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” (1 Samuel 30:6, NKJV)
He chose not to be bitter towards those who left and did not demand that they explain themselves. Like David, he strengthened himself in God when the people he had poured his life into had nothing to give back.
Keep passing on to others what was given to you. But also look around this week for someone who is always carrying everyone else, and ask how they are, and mean it. If you are that person, find your strength in God, as David did, and let one or two people in to share the load.
If this touched something in you, I have written more on both sides of that experience. A Friend Loves at All Times looks at what steady friendship looks like in Scripture, and Entrusted looks at faithfully carrying what has been placed in your hands, even when it costs you. Both are free to read online or download.
