There is an odd moment that occurs early on in the book of Genesis, at the creation of all things, actually. For the whole of chapter one, God conducts the symphony of creation, forming glory from nothing by the sheer force of his declared word. With each new explosion of creative wonders, God's summary of his work is simply stated: it was good. But abruptly, just after his creation reaches its apex with a creature made "in his image," God pronounces something to be "not good."

It was not good "that man should be alone."

I have a three-year-old son. I have started to notice that attention is a vital part of his little existence. So important to my son is the knowledge that his parents and others are paying careful attention to him, he will occasionally do the craziest of things, just to make sure people are still watching. He has learned something important, negative attention is better than no attention at all.

A wise friend of mine once said something that has always stuck with me, "The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference." We would rather die than think that no one cares enough even to dislike us. For lots of people in their teens, there are few feelings more profound than that of sheer loneliness. "Does anybody care? Do I matter to anyone?" In many ways, this is what it means for many of us to grow up.

There are probably lots of answers we can give to that question, and lots of ways that we go about dealing with the aching sense of being alone in the world, but the question that I want to entertain is this: Why? Why does it hurt so badly to feel alone? Why do my relationships with friends and family occupy so much of my thinking? Why is it that when I have nothing else to think about, my mind drifts to better friends, better parents, better teachers. In other words, the most meaningful "stuff" of life is our interaction with other people. I spend more time thinking about who I am in the eyes of others than I do about most other things.

The answer, I think, lies in the same passage in Genesis 1 and 2. You see, this same God who creates "in his image" is not merely a "Me" but also an "Us." That is, God's very self-definition is that of a Tri-Unity or Trinity. He is three persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and one essence. God did not create man because he was lonely. He was in fact NOT lonely. God has always existed in eternal, fellowship with the other members of the Trinity. He is a God with community and relationship built right into his own glorious self-existence.

So here's the point: doesn't it stand to reason that if this kind of God was going to create something "in his image," his creatures would not adequately reflect his image if they were not in fellowship with one another? This is why it is "not good" that man is alone. He needs the fellowship of other human beings to fill out what is lacking in his individuality.

So what does this mean? It means that the more alone we are, the less able we are to be before God what we are created to be. We need community as desperately as we need air. It is formatted onto our spiritual hard drives.

At its heart, RYM is about relationships. We are about your relationship with God. We are about your relationship with others who know God. We are about your relationships with those who do not know God. We are about your relationship with yourself. We believe that God is building a community, a wide expanse of his creatures from "every tribe, every tongue, and every nation," to populate his world and expand his glory into eternity. This is the linchpin to understanding how to minister to young people. As a youth director, our calling is to be about the people business. Watching students interact, challenging their assumptions about themselves, and teaching them what it looks like to walk with God and their neighbor...this is your calling.

If we are not in on that, then we have seriously missed the boat.

Rev. Les Newsom is the RUF Campus Minister at the University of Mississippi.