Where Everyone Knows Your Name

Remember the show, "Cheers" and the theme song, "Where Everyone Knows Your Name." My aerobics class is like that! Who wants to work out with strangers? I have and I would, but who wants to if you can work out with friends? Towards the middle of the aerobics class when we are sweating and out of breath, I usually say, "take a minute and introduce yourself to two people you don't know." Somewhat shy at first, a little timidly people begin to slowly circulate around their chosen "spot" and do just that, introduce themselves to a herebefore stranger sweating beside them. It breaks the ice, people begin to smile and I actually have to step up the beat to get their attention again. It is nice. So nice, to exercise where everyone knows your name. It is a little thing. But those little things mean a lot in the course of an impersonal world, the one in which we live. The one in which are daily lives consists of mail addressed to "Resident." Boy, that makes you feel special. I think if more of our churches took this approach, people would flock to their doors, instead of to the bars searching for identity, for a personal touch, to belong, for SOMEONE, somewhere to actually care, that someone knows their name . . .