Jeff Klein 0:09
Welcome to ERC's daily dose in the Word of God. It's Monday, March 18 and this is Jeff Klein with your weekly reminder to move your faith (and your following of Jesus) and take it beyond Sunday.
Jeff Klein 0:21
Author George MacDonald said this: "A person must not choose his neighbor, he or she must take the neighbor that God sends to them. The neighbor is just the person who is next to you at the moment. The person with whom any business or pleasure or endeavor has brought you into contact."
Jeff Klein 0:38
Brilliant. Jesus offered a similar perspective when he told his disciples to, "...go, and as you are going, make a disciple." We are going all the time - to work, play, shop to attend our kids sporting events - and as we go, are we tuned in to the neighbor's that God is placing in our paths? Do we consider that God might be placing that person in front of us for a reason? Is it possible that the Lord wants us to engage in some conversation, or in some other way? Intersections cause us to cross paths with people that we would not normally find ourselves around. This doesn't just happen driving on the road, but in regular life all the time! We walk through a store and suddenly our lives intersect with a person that before was not even on our radar. We traveled through our town and run into someone. We go to work and there are people there that intersect with our lives. Most of the time, we treat those as interruptions to our day or schedules - especially if they're people that we don't know.
Jeff Klein 1:39
Jesus paid close attention to these intersections. He seemed to treat them as God-ordained appointments. In first verse of John 9, we read this: "as he went along he saw a man, blind from birth." People saw this man every day and just walked by him thinking of him as another sinner deserving his punishment of blindness. People wrote that blind guy off every day - not Jesus. He stops, he notices, he gets involved and he heals. Who will you pass by today? What neighbor will God choose for you this week? Will you be ready? Will you be paying enough attention to notice?
Jeff Klein 2:21
Let's pray. Jesus, give us the eyes to see the neighbors that you are choosing for us. The people that you have put in our path that we're supposed to engage with in some way. Prompt us through your Holy Spirit to pay attention. In your name Jesus we pray all these things. Amen.