My wife and I took our son to go see Madagascar 2 a while back. I remember that there were enough one-liners in the movie to provide enough chuckles from me that I didn’t fall asleep. There were two lines that caused me to whip out my phone and make a note to myself right away. One line was: “They’re New Yorkers, they’re just rude and angry people.” Okay, so it struck me as funny, what does that say about me? 
The other line that I wrote down was much deeper and much more deep. The zebras were running as a herd and you hear one make this comment: “It’s one for all, and all for all.” Did you read that properly? “It’s one for all, and all for ALL.”
It was proof that sometimes things hit us deeper when we’re assuming we know what’s coming, but then a curve ball happens and we learn something instead of staying numb to the same-old-same-old. The cliche is only different by one word, but the depth of meaning is much more significant.
While in the theater the movie kept going, but my mind began to wander. How true the statement is on so many levels. We realize that there is safety in numbers and that is why so many animals live in herds. The parallel to the community life that God has designed us to live in is obvious.
What struck me about the phase was the last word… “all.” We are familiar with the phrase ending with “…all for one.” While the Musketeers used the phrase as a commitment to each other, there was still a recognition of individualism within the greater body.
In the body of Christ, we need to make an effort to keep the focus on the body, not the individual. In Colossians 3:11 Paul writes these words; “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
It is prior to our salvation that individualism and separation flourishes. It is after salvation, when we enter the body of Christ, that our identity is found in what is bigger than any single person, the body of Christ!
