Tag Archives: neighborhood

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Daily Broadside | A Flood, Some Friends, and the Grace of God

Daily Verse | 1 Chronicles 29:9
The people rejoiced at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the Lord.

Thursday’s Reading: 2 Chronicles 1-5

Happy Thursday. More of a personal reflection this morning.

On Tuesday evening we experienced the scourge of households everywhere when one of our sump pumps stopped working and began to flood the basement. April showers and all that. Fortunately, my wife had gone into the back room for something and discovered the unfolding disaster, preventing it from going any further — although it was already pretty bad since the smell of sewer water was already wafting through the air.

We started bailing by getting the shop vac and filling that, dipping buckets into it when it was full, walking them up the stairs and down the hall to the front door, then throwing them out into the lawn. Rather smelly business.

The irony is that a friend had asked if I wanted to spend some time praying for an hour or so. I had nothing on the schedule, and it was during that time that the springs burst. Fortunately — or was it Providentially? — he had grown up fixing sump pumps in properties his father owned and knew exactly what to do. As for me, I had replaced a sump pump one time about 10 years ago, so I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence and experience.

If it hadn’t been for his presence, I wouldn’t have gotten to bed by 1:00 a.m. I would have been trying to figure out what I needed and how to fit the pipes together. As it turned out, I had all the necessary tools (90 percent of any solution), but I didn’t have the know-how. He did.

In addition, while my friend and I were out getting a new pump and all the fittings around 9:45 PM, some neighbors showed up to help. They came with buckets, a pump to get the water out, and a willingness to do whatever we needed.

As it turned out, there wasn’t much for them to do, but the fact that they showed up that late in the evening (they all have day jobs, too) to lend a hand was more of an encouragement to me than if they dug a trench from my basement to Lake Michigan. That’s something that I think is missing in neighborhoods these days — a true sense of community. We’re working to build that here, with Christ at the center of it.

Anyway, by the time we had installed the new pump, cleaned up the little water remaining, mopped the basement floor, started a load of towels, cleaned the buckets and put all the tools away, it was after mid-night. It was a little late to start a blog post, so I bailed again (see what I did there?) and decided to get some sleep.

As I climbed into bed and pulled the covers up around 1:00 AM, I thanked God for the remarkable “coincidence” that a friend had reached out to me to pray, had driven to my house and, as we were praying for each other and our families, I was given (yes, “given”) an urgent hardship — and he was there to help us manage the exact problem we faced in that moment.

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”
— Philippians 4:19

And that’s how God sometimes works.

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Daily Broadside | Don’t Take Scalps But Love Your Neighbor

Daily Verse | Isaiah 44:6
“This is what the Lord says—
Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty:
I am the first and I am the last;
apart from me there is no God.”

It’s Friday and the end of the week. Dancing in the rain is not as much fun as dancing in the shower.

I don’t typically share much that is personal on these pages, primarily because this isn’t a journal about my life. It’s a place for me to sound off about how I see faith, culture and politics — with an emphasis on politics. Anyone reading this blog for any length of time will know that I have strong opinions about our national politics and our political culture, and even stronger convictions about our rights as American citizens.

However, I just came in from cutting my lawn and am writing this for Friday morning. That’s relevant because we and some of our neighbors are hosting a block party for our street Friday night. We have about 75 people coming and we’ll have a taco truck, games for the kids, music, perhaps a small bonfire in the evening, and we invited the local sheriff to stop by.

We’re doing it because we want to get to know our neighbors. Earlier this year my wife and I invited couples near us to form a group to get to know each other around some meaningful conversation. We meet once a week for dinner and conversation, then spend an hour or more discussing a passage from the Gospel of John. It’s been a great way to build relationships with them and move past the wave and “Hey, howz it goin’?” stage of being neighbors.

The block party is another step in the process of building a community right where we live. What better way to break the ice than to bring the neighborhood together for an opportunity to do more than wave as they drive past the house or give them a nod as their garage door closes?

What surprised us is that the highway commissioner for our township was excited about what we are doing. She is fully supportive and will deliver tables, chairs, and blockades for each end of the street with “Block Party” signs. As my wife was working out the details with her, the commissioner said something to the effect of, “We need to be getting out and mixing it up after being locked down for so long.”

That’s true. The pandemic created a lot of fear and isolated people as they hid in their homes and behind masks. It’s tough enough in our current culture to get to know neighbors and the Chinese Lung Pox made it that much harder by keeping people separated.

As a Christ-follower, this is also a way to build relationships with people in whom God may be doing some work. Before his ascension, Jesus gave his disciples “the Great Commission.”

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

— Matthew 28:18-20

You can’t make disciples if you don’t know anybody, so getting introduced to neighbors is a practical way to start that process. I don’t go into the event with any agenda other than to meet people who live up and down the street and listen for what God may or may not be up to. I try to follow Henry Blackaby’s advice: “Watch to see where God is working and join Him in His work.”

That’s a different approach from what most Christians are taught, which is to “do” evangelism. “Evangelism” in the traditional sense of the term is a terrifying act in which you approach total strangers and ask them if they know where they’re going when they die, then share the “Four Spiritual Laws” with them and hope they make a decision to follow Jesus. After that you flee back to the group that sent you out and tell your story to them.

There’s no doubt the Four Spiritual Laws are biblical truth and explain our predicament in relationship to God. And it’s true that some people have come to faith through this method of outreach. But the approach — basically confronting someone with a heavy personal choice that they may or may not have ever thought about — isn’t necessarily the only, or even the most effective, way to talk to someone about Big Truth. We live in an easily offended, post-Christian society now.

Jesus certainly used different approaches in his ministry that depended on what he saw God his Father doing.

“I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19).

So the problem, as it were, with the old style scalp-seeking method of evangelism, is that it bypasses what you see God doing and then joining him in it. The better way to approach making disciples, I believe, is through personal relationships and paying attention to what God is doing in those.

In order to have personal relationships, you have to spend time with people. That’s the deeper purpose behind the block party — not just the fun of eating tacos, meeting new people, playing some games and finding out what you have in common — but to discern whether there are needs to be met, questions to be answered, or connections to be made.

There is no pressure—just participation. As Blackaby also said:

Have a great weekend and I’ll see you Monday.