We take for granted in the functioning of the human body that if one part fails to do its work all the other parts are hindered: if someone’s kidney fails, or his or her heart, then the whole system begins to break down. Paul applied that image to Christian ministry: “For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another” (Rom. 12:4–5). The implication is that if each one does the ministry she or he is intended to do, the work of Christ in the world will be done – the poor will be cared for, the sick nursed, the homeless housed, the gospel preached. The functioning of the Body of Christ depends upon each of us being where we need to be, doing what we are given to do, using our particular gifts.
But what about someone who “only” suffers, or someone who “only” waits? What about someone in a monastery who “only” prays? The Hasidic story aligns itself with Paul’s image, and suggests an inner dynamic: that gifts of the Spirit come to us when each one is doing just what he or she is called to do, no matter what it is, and no matter whether we know about it. A quite hidden influence is being exercised. It might come from someone close to us, who thinks of us or prays for us just when we are in need. But it might also come from someone, or some combination of persons, in some distant place, who, by doing just what they are given to do, enhance our own gift of the Spirit as we do what we are called to do. “Doers” may be energized by someone they may never meet, and in ways they would never imagine. One suspects that the web of interconnection is not just what we see and can reason to in the outer world, but something far more mysterious and secret, operating invisibly under the surface. It does depend upon fidelity, upon each one of us being faithful to what is given to us no matter what it is. This fidelity allows for a free flow of God’s life throughout the whole organism of the Body of Christ, or even of the whole of humanity.
–Elaine M. Prevallet in Pendle Hill Pamphlet 261: Interconnections