Jamie and I bought our first home a few years back. It was a crazy process. One night, after working more than fourteen hours remodeling, we were all trying to get some shuteye when someone started banging on my door at four o’clock in the morning. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
I was wiped out from the crazy day of hard work, so I woke up in a daze. You may know what I’m talking about. It's as if you’re actually only half awake. If you’re anything like me, you probably slobber a little bit and are extra grumpy. I didn’t have time to think about how my eyelids were hanging heavy. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The person at the door was still banging away.
I was still asleep, but I was getting mad. After all, I had guests in my house—people who had worked hard helping us prepare our new home—and some crazy person was still knocking on my door. I stumbled to my closet in some kind of sleep deprived stupor and got my shotgun. I’m not kidding. Suddenly there it was again. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The front door still rocking on the hinges.
By then I was both awake and livid. I don’t even know how I had time to get so mad. It all happened so fast I didn’t have a chance to not get mad. Instinct just took over.
In a rapid blur of quick succession, I grabbed the door knob and threw the door open with a BOOM louder than the knocking had probably been. As the door swung open I stuck my shotgun right into the gap—right into the face of this tiny little pregnant woman. She screamed “Lawd Jesus!” and almost fell off my porch. I would probably scream too if someone stuck a shotgun in my face.
Actually, there was a lot more to this situation—even though this lady was pregnant, she was also not in her right mind. She was very clearly high on something and had come looking for gas money. She was very ambiguous, totally unwilling to go into any detail about her situation. I had put down my gun and was trying to ask her questions. To be honest, unless she would have been obviously wounded or injured in some way it wouldn’t have mattered. I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t help her. There were just too many cobwebs in my head from the fatigue of the day.
You see, this woman needed help, but all I wanted was sleep. I’d like to tell you I helped her, but I was so mad I sent her away. Any help I might have given wouldn’t have lasted long. By the time I was closing my door cops were coming up the street to take her away. Apparently, I wasn’t her first stop.
The truth is we can’t become too sleepy to care. Caring moves you forward. We must care about what happens around us. We desperately need to love the people God puts in our path because they may be desperately in need of love.
There is no doubt here at all on my part. I handled this situation very poorly in the story I just told you. I didn’t see. I didn’t care. I only reacted. Were there some valid reasons for my actions? Probably. Would I respond the same way if it happened again tonight? Perhaps. But I’m learning to have more compassion for the situations coming my way. I’m trying to see needs and meet them if I can. A lot like this guy named Ezra in the Bible.
Ezra was tired too. He had a whole country full of tired people he was helping after one hundred and twenty-eight years of struggles on their part. Ezra showed up right in the middle of a terrible situation because he was paying attention and looking for an opportunity to help.
We must observe! We must look around! I have gotten this wrong so often. I’m not the only one. I think it’s common anymore to hear people who are not followers of Jesus respond with an air of cynicism when it comes to those of us who do follow Jesus. In my experience this perspective has a lot more to do with the actions, and inaction, of Christians than it does with their simple lack of belief. Look, we have to care about what’s going on right in front of us before we can faithfully take the next step forward.
Ezra walked (literally) into a lost kingdom. He cared about the Kingdom. He was not apathetic and indifferent to the situation. He was not antagonistic or against the situation. He was compassionately aware of the situation.
When Jesus talked about his friends and those who followed him he talked about another kingdom. He called it the Kingdom of God. How do we feel about those missing from the Kingdom of God? Through some painful self-reflection, it dawned on me we might learn our true feelings about the missing ones if they happened to find our front door at four o’clock in the morning.
Becoming apathetic toward those who haven’t embraced their invitation to follow Jesus is far too easy. If we believe in the value of a soul, we must consider vital the opportunities to connect with those souls. We talk a lot in the Church about people finding Jesus, but what if Jesus sent them to you first? If that feels weighty, good. I think people ought to matter to us enough to make us uncomfortable with how we’ve messed this up.
I read recently how over two billion people call themselves Christians out of the more than seven billion people on the planet. Honestly, that’s a number so large I had to have my math teaching wife explain it to me. Any time you use numbers involving billions of anything you’re dealing with a staggering computation. So, let’s put this in a frame of reference that will help us understand.
What if we lined up all the people who gather in your church, at your local hangout spot, or maybe your gym on a Monday afternoon? If we lined everyone up how far would the line, go? Perhaps it would go a few dozen feet. Maybe it would stretch the length of a football field. Maybe it would even go a mile or two.
However, if you lined up all the people in this world who are not following Jesus, the number we collectively call “lost”. If we lined them all up and headed east from where I sit at my desk right now the line would go all the way across America. It would reach the Atlantic Ocean, travel through Great Britain, and across Europe, through the Middle East, and India, and Asia, and it wouldn’t stop there. The line would fly right back across the Pacific Ocean, fly by Hawaii, through California, across the Rockies, and the American Midwest all the way right back here to my seat.
The person in the front of the line could turn around and high-five the person in the back of the line. Then it would just keep going and going. The line would go around the whole planet two times, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, forty times. It would just keep going. The line would wrap around the entire world more than fifty times. That's how many lost people are in this world. We must see them.
Right here in my hometown. In this lovely part of the world we locals call the River Valley most people do not profess to follow Jesus. They haven’t followed their invitation. We need to acknowledge that. I need to acknowledge them. I need to put down my pet issues and stop brandishing them like a shotgun at midnight. I must stave off fatigue, fear, and financial worry. I must see them.
That guy Ezra I mentioned earlier had a small part in a big story. He wasn’t afraid to dream big about his role. He wanted to do more because he cared. He was looking out at the world around him, and he saw a kingdom needing help. He did it. He never stopped moving forward. He led a four-month excursion across a thousand miles of bandit-filled desert. Ezra was like Mad Max with a camel instead of a Camaro. When his neighbors showed up in the middle of the night looking for help he didn’t pull out his shotgun. No, Ezra was devoted to helping his neighbors, his friends, his family, and even the strangers down the block learn who this great God of his was. He was devoted to helping them move forward. He was devoted to helping a lost kingdom become a whole kingdom, where no one was missing, no one was disqualified, and no one was shunned.
Ezra did it. It’s a cool story, but he didn’t do it alone. There were some guys with crazy names on board. These two fellas called Haggai and Zachariah helped a lot. They were prophets, which means they talked quite a bit about what God was trying to tell his friends. This guy Nehemiah was also there leading the workers and government officials.
You can read all these guys’ stories and it paints one big cool story. It’s the story of a group of people who had experienced generations of calamity and were trying to bounce back. None of them could do it alone. Thank God they didn’t have to.
Once all their work was done they partied. After their ruined city was rebuilt, and the walls fixed, and the place where they went to worship called the Temple was all patched up, they had a big to-do. It was like a barbeque, book reading, and concert all rolled into one. People cried, and people danced. They listened and loved. Neighbors rejoiced in the finished work and high-fived each other for the first time in decades. But what if Ezra and his friends had shown up in the middle of the night and someone had stuck a gun in their face?
There is much work to be done and workers to do it. There are needs to meet and people to meet them. We must acknowledge. We have to wake up.
The Nathan I used to be couldn’t most of the time. I just didn’t have it in me. The Nathan I’m trying to be now can’t afford not to.
People are still beating down my door. Everyday my phone buzzes at least fifty times with people on the other end who need help. Guess what? I don’t hang up or ignore them. Maybe your phone is ringing way more often. Perhaps your door has already fell off the hinges from all the knocking. Do something about it. You’ve got it in you, and even when you run out of that God will help you find some more.
There are no closed doors, no shotguns, and no screaming pregnant ladies falling off my porch anymore. I am awake. Hopefully for good. You go be awake too. Find someone needing you to do better than you’ve done before and do it.
