My wife and I are blessed to live in an ethnically diverse neighborhood. We have Filipino, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Afghan, and Caucasian neighbors just on our street alone, and everyone gets along beautifully. All summer long the neighborhood kids would play outside together until it got dark- just like I did when I was a kid. Needless to say, we really appreciate the great sense of community that our neighborhood has. Over the last few months, our Afghan neighbors daughters (ages 12, 10 and 4) would occasionally knock on our door to ask for food, cooking ingredients or to make a local call on our house phone. Some tomatoes here. Some sugar there. Some carrots here. A phone call there. It started to become more and more frequent, sometimes at very inconvenient times for my wife. Through conversations with the daughters, we learned that they were renters and that they would receive government assistance for groceries every month. The father is a hard worker with his own taxi cab license and van, and the mother stays home to take care of their 5 children. So my wife, feeling a little inconvenienced by the situation, asked me what I thought. I said, We go out of our way to feed the homeless on the weekends, and we dont even know their names. How can we claim to have the love of Christ in us if we cant give a little food to our neighbors from time to time, whose names we know? What if they actually dont have enough food to eat? That would be sad. Is it inconvenient? Yes. But serving Christ is usually very inconvenient. My wife and I talked about benevolence a little more, and we both agreed that we would continue helping our neighbors without complaining. Over the last few weeks, we have noticed an interesting shift in the atmosphere. On a few occasions when the daughters knocked on our door, instead of asking for food or to use our phone- they brought over these deliciously prepared Afghan dishes. After working 12 hours in ICU last night, I got home and my wife said, Our neighbors made you dinner. It was some sort of rice plate with meatballs covered with this crazy delicious red curry sauce with yogurt on the side. I had no idea what the dish was called. All I knew was I was in curry meatball heaven! As I was thoroughly enjoying my meal, I said to The Lord, Lord, this is just beautiful. I am literally eating a reward of doing Your Will. I encourage you all to stretch beyond the convenience zone of your faith, so that you might experience the tastier spiritual rewards that God has in store for you. Serving Christ can be very inconvenient, but that convenience barrier is what oftentimes separates the doers of the Word from the hearers. Gods Word says: James 1:22 (KJV) 22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. Hebrews 13:16 (NIV) 16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. Be encouraged yall because Jesus is alive!
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 03:03:09 +0000
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