Neighbors

What if we read fewer books on loving our neighbor and just DID? What if we didn't join a "small group", didn't go to the seminar, didn't have a board meeting? What if we worried less about enabling, co-dependency , or being taken advantage of? What if we Really listened to that still, small voice when it prompts us to love on people all around us?

I recently heard a true story, told to me by a dear friend. I almost hate to recant it, for fear that I will fail to communicate what is in my heart with respect to it.

On the way to MEC one passes a number of beggers on the sidewalk. It can be quick and painless if you make no eye contact and walk by briskly as if to say ; "there's tonnes of important stuff that I have to do today and I honestly never noticed you over there, asking for money....."

What if we remember that our "important stuff" is to show, to be, and to give love? That's what my friend did. As they ate lunch in the nearby food court, she asked him about himself. Not because she bought him lunch, and so he deserved to make her feel like a real Christian by telling her what a shitty life he had lived and how she was his "savior" because she was nice to him instead of blowing him off like we all usually do. No, she's just a regular, genuinely great person who got interested in the guy on the corner who looked like he might be a little hungry.

"My mom left during the night when I was 13. She left a letter on the table addressed to my father, but me being a stupid kid, I opened the envelope and read it. She was tired of raising kids, she said. Its time to put "me" back in the equasion. Good-bye, I won't be back.

I put the letter back in the envelope.

You know, I've never told that to anyone ever before."