The Daily Guide. grow. pray. study. from The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, United States for Thursday, 28 July 2016 - "Good neighbors in a strange land"
Daily Scripture: Jeremiah 29:4 “Here is what Adonai-Tzva’ot, the God of Isra’el, says to all those in exile, whom I have caused to be carried off captive from Yerushalayim to Bavel: 5 ‘Build yourselves houses, and live in them. Plant gardens, and eat what they produce. 6 Choose women to marry, and have sons and daughters. Choose wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage to men, so that they can have sons and daughters — increase your numbers there, don’t decrease. 7 Seek the welfare of the city to which I have caused you to go in exile, and pray to Adonai on its behalf; for your welfare is bound up in its welfare.’
Reflection Questions:
Babylon took many Hebrews into exile in 597 B.C., and then destroyed Jerusalem in a final conquest in 586 B.C. In that interim, the prophet Jeremiah wrote a letter to the Hebrews who had already been taken to Babylon. It included today’s reading. He offered no false comfort, but told them they should settle down and prepare for a long period of exile. But even as captives in that foreign land, he urged them to live as good neighbors.
- Some “prophets” were telling the Israelites that God would send them back to Israel within two years (see Jeremiah 28:3). If you had been an exile, wouldn’t you have wanted that to be true, rather than Jeremiah’s “wait, and be a good neighbor” message? Have you ever been disappointed with God’s timing? How do you maintain patience and hope when things aren’t working out as you’d wish, when you wish?
- In that same message, Jeremiah told the Israelites (on God’s behalf): “When you search for me, yes, search for me with all your heart, you will find me” (Jeremiah 29:13). In what ways was the quality of their connection with God essential to them being able to live as good neighbors even when in exile? What do you believe it would mean for you to seek God “with all your heart,” and how might that shape your ways of relating to others?
Lord Jesus, teach me patience and endurance when life is hard. Plant in me the hunger and thirst to seek you with all my heart, and to let you shape every aspect of the way I live my life. Amen.
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Janelle Gregory serves on the Resurrection staff as a Human Resources Specialist.When we moved into our current home, we had to get the concrete outside our front door repaired. On our invoice, I saw that we were billed for fixing our “porch.” Really? A porch? It’s a 4’ x 6 ‘ slab, just enough for 2 people to stand on to ring the doorbell.
I suppose one would call it a porch, but I grew up in a house built many decades ago with areal front porch. The porch had chairs and a table where you could sit and watch the neighbors walk by. You knew what was going on in your neighbor’s life, because you knew your neighbor. You knew when your neighbor had cancer, lost a job, had a baby, had an affair, took up dance lessons, joined a gym, had a mid-life crisis, and the list goes on and on.
Because of these interactions, when you were really sick, it was your neighbor who brought you dinner. Your neighbor watched your house while you were out of town. Your neighbors let you borrow that missing ingredient when cooking dinner. Why go to the grocery store when you could get a cup of flour 20 feet away? Need a certain tool to do a project? For goodness sake, don’t buy it when your friends next door have one. And your neighbors felt the same way about you. You lived with and did life with the community around you.
These days, most houses are built with tiny front porches and big backyard decks. Decks allow us the option to be more selective about our interactions. You must be invited into a conversation on a deck, whereas a porch just allowed conversations to happen.
I’ll be honest in that I really like the idea of a deck. I have just enough introvert in me to enjoy being left alone at times. I don’t want to feel like I am always “on” or that my neighbors are always in my business. When our society moved from a front-porch to a back-deck culture, we certainly gained that autonomy. But I think we have to recognize what we lost with that freedom. It is far more difficult to know our neighbors.
If we want to know the people living a stone’s throw away, we must be intentional about it. While the layout of our houses doesn’t always encourage this, the Bible certainly does. Learning to love our literal neighbors means that we must recognize and get over our backyard-deck mentality. There is a freedom that we surrender in doing so but, with that, we gain an answer to a calling and a richness of true community.
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The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
13720 Roe Avenue
Leawood, Kansas 66224, United States
913.897.0120
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