40 Acts - Strangers or unmet friends?

"I was a stranger and you welcomed me." Matthew 25: 35 (ESV)

Do you talk to strangers? Often? Sometimes? Never?

From childhood, we are warned about the risks of meeting strangers which could vary from potential danger, exploitation or unsuitability to simply annoyance and inconvenience. We also worry that we will annoy others and encroach on their personal space. It can feel much easier just to relax and talk to people you already know and who are ’safe’ and similar and don’t present risk. In churches it is particularly easy to stick with those we feel comfortable with.

I run an online dating website, Christian Connection, where we actively encourage people to contact strangers online or at social events. Sometimes people join our site and are then are too cautious to talk to people or respond to messages. They hope it will just ‘happen’.

There is nothing more wonderful than hearing stories of how people took the plunge, contacted others, and have found special and lasting relationships. And even if they don’t find the special ‘one’, they find friendships. Ultimately, in whatever situation, we need to reach out to people, even when we feel nervous.

Jesus constantly encountered new people and was open to those who needed him and even those who attacked him – he was out there. He did suggest being as ’wise as serpents and innocent as doves’ but he and his disciples stretching down through history reached out to people all over the world.

I go to a small church service where there are many good and lasting friendships. One of my friends there, Shirley, is always the first to go up to the visitors and welcome them immediately, and they warm to her. Probably she is the person they most remember and the reason why they might come back.

Reaching out to somebody might change their life – and it might even change yours.

Jackie  Elton

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How can't we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?

It's odd but having just walked from the North pier to the South along the beach and promenade at Blackpool I feel like an alien; an outsider in the world in which I find myself contained,

Having walked past the couples with their tattoos, studs and Tee shirts with what is perhaps just a little too blatant an advert for world (don't talk - F*!$ me, being perhaps the worst in class - although their we're many close competitors), I find myself wondering what parallel dimension I now exist within, and how I got here.

I 've met people who are in need of a coffee (so bought them one) and being listened to (so I listened to them) and are in need of being removed from this place of shabby existence (so I told them about Jesus and His escape committee, of which I am a representative) and prayed for them and left, knowing there's more, sadly.

When the Bible talks about 'no longer being part of this world, of being strangers and sojourners in a strange land - only visitors, not residents', a passage I have often referred to, I had no idea that 'their' world had become so very different from the one I recall. I thought, perhaps naively, that the world I remember being part of and the world I inhabit in what is not a bad place at all (unless you believe some rags who proclaim it to be the fattest place in England that is) lies within the shallows compared to the depths of here.

In this alien territory where toddlers have 'WTF?' Tee shirts and women utter such language that a hardened mate lot would blush, the needs are immense and obvious. So where is the Jesus, the Christ, obvious (for I'm sure He is in the many other visitors from that other place here with me)? How can I see what I have, experience what I do and not have the compelling desire to preach that the Kingdom of God is with them, tattoos, expletives, alcohol, drugs, sex and all?

Ever had that moment when you realise that whatever it is that you do, it is not enough?

When you realise that somehow the Zombie invasion didn't, and isn't going to happen and that whilst bodysnatchers are just a fiction - those who snatch and destroy the soul exist and profit large?

Pray for those who bring the Good News to those in this alien land. Those who bring sight, hearing, freedom from captivity and proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.

Better still, become one.

I know that's what I want to be ;-)

Pax