Dead or Alive?

“It has been a week since his car has moved…the mail is piling up…there are no foot prints in the snow from his house…he is usually really quick to remove the snow off his drive way…I knocked on the door and made a couple phone calls but no one answers..”, my dad said. It had been a week since my dad had seen his next door neighbor Roger. Roger is a single guy who has no family, no one really knows him in the neighborhood, and growing up Roger’s house reminded me of the movie Psycho. I later learned that the police could not enter into Roger’s house until two or more weeks had passed since anyone had heard anything.

A number of years ago someone asked me to draw a map of my neighborhood. I drew our street and the streets that attached, and then they said, “Now draw all of the houses”. The next step was for me to label all the houses with the names of the people that lived in them. That step was a tough one. I knew the people on either side and the names of the people across the street, but the people 4 houses down, no way. I was then asked to identify three things that I knew about the people in houses that lived around me, and that was humbling. Here I talked about having a heart for sharing my faith with others, but I didn’t even know the names of people around me. Go ahead and get on Google Maps and check out your neighborhood. Who lives there? What can you tell me about them? What are there interests, where do they work, what is their story?

We can read through the Bible and study it inside and out, but where do we live it? People say to me all the time, “Matt I want to go deeper, I want to dive into the Bible and find out what it means and I don’t want to get into a group that won’t do that”. It is great to want to study to grow in your relationship with God, but is it possible that you can grow in your relationship with God by talking to the neighbor who just got laid off from work? Is it possible to become more like Jesus when you go to the neighbor next door and say you are sorry for how you have been mean to them two different times? Could it be possible that we are stretched more by telling the single mom who lives down the street that we will watch her kids when she needs to go shopping than we are by underlining the verse that talks about caring for widows and orphans?  I am not saying that it is bad for a group to get together and study the Bible, but I do think we are missing the point when we stay in the huddle for too long and never enter into the game.

My dad, through police help, eventually found out Roger was in the hospital with a ruptured appendix. He visited Roger that day in the hospital and found out more about Roger than he ever knew before. Roger sat there with tears in his eyes telling my father how much his visit meant. That day my dad didn’t just know the words of Jesus, he lived the words of Jesus. He went deeper. That day he took his eyes off of himself and focused the eyes of Jesus on Roger.

Take some time to draw your neighborhood. Who are the people that live around you? How can you be Jesus to them? Maybe for you it isn’t drawing your neighborhood; maybe it is drawing your office, or your classroom. Where ever you find yourself in community, may you be Jesus to those around you. As a group, how can you impact your communities? Take time to pray for the communities around you.