Strangers

One part of the ministry here in Dulce that has really grown in the past year or so has been providing a meal to people who stop at the house. I don’t know for certain but I think that for most of the time we’ve been here we’ve fed people, but I believe in the early years it was something that was very occasional, maybe just a few times a month. In the last year it has been several times a week, and sometimes several times a day. Yesterday was probably the all-time high, with six people coming by and asking for a sandwich or “a sack.”

We have been blessed by the support of some of our mission partners in giving specifically to support this work. In the past it came out of our family’s food budget but now we are able to keep things on hand specifically for this purpose. We give people either a sandwich or some leftovers, depending on what we had for dinner that day and the appetites of our children, Gatorade, fruit, chips and another snack. Dessert if we have something on hand that is easy to place into a bag.

I often know the people who stop by for a meal. As a matter of fact after I wrote the last sentence of the previous paragraph the door bell rang and two of the men I fed yesterday were at the door. Their presence has changed what I was intending to write in this post. They were already carrying a meal that they had picked up at the Senior Center and today they stopped so that they could pray for me and that I could pray for them.

Yesterday I read the Old Testament book of Joel. As a prophet of the time before Jesus Joel is somewhat typical as he calls on God’s people to return to God lest they feel His wrath, as he notes that God will avenge the enemies of His children, and as he ends with words that point to the grace God has for His children. In the closing of his short book Joel writes this:

“So you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who dwells in Zion, my holy mountain. And Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers shall never again pass through it.”

I think that Joel is looking forward to what the New Testament refers to as the New Jerusalem, where God will gather all of His children to be with Him forever. In referring to “strangers” I believe that Joel’s point is that the only people who will be there will be God’s children, a people fully known to Him and all equal members in His family.

The people who stop at our door often know about God and ask us to pray with them, but I wonder, do they know God? When the day that Joel looks forward to comes, will they be members of the family, or strangers, unknown and left outside? I don’t really know.

But I do know that God has called us to answer the doorbell, to feed, to listen, and to pray. The outcome is entirely in His hands but my hope is that on that great and glorious day we’ll be joined together as family to praise our glorious King.

 

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.