All of us, on some level, long to feel a sense of community with people who know and accept us for who we are. The problem lies when we disagree on who is supposed to create it. I remember sitting down with an editor at a writer’s conference one year to tell him about my idea for a book that dealt with the emotional side of moving.

“We relocated two years ago and still don’t know our neighbors,” he confessed.

“Why not?”

“My wife would tell you that it’s because no one has stopped by to introduce themselves.”

“She has to do the knocking,” I assured him.

“That’s what I told her,” he exclaimed, “but she thinks the neighbors should be the ones to come by since we moved onto their street.”

Although the editor’s wife acted like it was a matter of principle, John Ortberg would suggest that her mindset was more about fear. “When God calls people to do something,” Ortberg stated on page 142 of his book, “their initial response is almost always fear. If there is a challenge in front of you, a course of action that could cause you to grow and that would be helpful to people around you, but you find yourself scared about it, there’s a real good chance that God is in the challenge.”[ii]

God was definitely in the challenge as I knocked on doors to obtain contact information for neighbors who were not at the BBQ and used that information to invite them to our first annual summer block party, complete with barricades to close off the street and a live band in our driveway.

While the music played, one gentleman at the party spoke up to say: “In the fifty years I’ve lived on this street, nothing like this has ever happened.”

As touched as I was by his comment, at the end of the evening I was still asking myself if all the work was worth it. My answer came the next day in the form of a teenager who called out to me from the driveway of his home (which was a few houses down and across the street from ours).

“Hi!” the voice yelled as soon as I climbed out of the passenger seat of my husband's vehicle.

I turned around to find a boy smiling as he waved in my direction.

The saying is true, I decided while waving back, you can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.[iii]

What interested me about this teenager is why he would go out of his way to say hello to a grown up he just met. Maybe, I decided, he's glad that somebody on the block knows his name.

“Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act.”

(Proverbs 3:27)

Quotes to Grow On

“We all hold convictions about what matters most in our lives, about what we hold most dear. But when we take stock of our day-to-day actions, there is often a gap between what we value and the way we spend our time, money, or energy.”

John Ortberg, It All Goes Back In The Box, p. 100

“very rarely in the Bible does God bother to interrupt someone’s life and ask him or her to do an easy task. He doesn't call Moses over to a burning bush to ask him if he could take on a few more sheep . . . God wants to use us, wants to grow us up, wants us to be strong and wise and courageous.”

John Ortberg, It All Goes Back In The Box, pp. 140-141

“We need to ask ourselves what we are doing (or not doing) with our lives now that could lead to deep regret.”

John Ortberg, It All Goes Back In The Box, p. 97