Your Best Investment

Have you been thinking about and praying through who in your life God is calling you to invest yourself in? I suspect that you have … but hopefully you have found the process to be easier than I have.

I still don’t have a firm answer but one thing I have found … this process is making me be more intentional and purposeful in building relationships. I am finding myself lingering longer in conversations and meetings, being more transparent in my communications, engaging more people and not really knowing where it might lead, asking deeper questions of others when appropriate, being “in the present” more of the time … all of those things.

And it’s been refreshing and rewarding. I have met new people, and gotten to know old friends better. I have opened myself up in ways that have allowed others to strengthen me through specific prayers for me …

It’s been huge.

It’s been a glimpse of the community God calls us to … the community Jesus left His followers in and that He wanted us all to be in … the community that foretells God’s new Kingdom that I pray for His redeeming grace that I might someday see.

And I have been thinking about someone …

There used to be a young man who lived in our neighborhood who seemed like a kid very much on the right path. He used to babysit for our son. You’d look at him and hope your own child would someday grow up to be like him. Straight-A student, big dreams for the future, athletic, musical, caring, involved in his youth group, very spiritual, mature way beyond his years … he very much was on the right path.

Then his family had to move away due to a job change. We have had only sporadic contact with the family but we have found that this young man has changed paths … fallen into the wrong crowd … visits to his MySpace and FaceBook pages have confirmed this.

We’ve been shocked, surprised, and saddened. We’ve been brought to new places of prayer for this young man, now 18, out of high school, and as a result completely out of his loving and caring parents’ control.

But I wonder … what if someone — other than his parents – would have come alongside him during his critical teenage years? What if someone would have been there to encourage and support and bolster him to keep him on the right path instead of the path he has turned to? Did everyone just assume he would always stay on a good path, without someone coming along to mentor him? That was what I had assumed.

I know God is watching over this young man and God is aching to re-establish the relationship that the two of them once enjoyed … and I pray that someone will hear God’s call and come alongside this young man and invest in him. His life will not be redeemed and transformed until that happens.

Adds new perspective and importance to investing ourselves in others, doesn’t it?