Tuesday nights are when my team gathers after dinner to discuss various books that we read throughout the course of Mission Year. While the questions and discussions are focused around specific sections of books, much of the discussion is usually about general topics that anyone could have something to say about. Last Tuesday one of our dear neighbors and friends texted one of my teammates and asked what we were making for dinner. We told her, and we invited her to come over for dinner and to stick around for our curriculum discussion. We have had some really great conversations with this particular neighbor before, and she is very intelligent and seeks to grow and learn in ways that are unique from many of her peers. So she came over and hung out with us for several hours, as we all discussed a book she had not read. She listened pretty intently to the discussion that we all had, and she joined in from time to time. I remember specifically listening to this friend talk about how our society tends to perpetuate materialism and how that has negatively affected her family, particularly by her single mother feeling pressured to provide joy and contentment for her children by providing material things to them. The evening felt fruitful and significant, and our neighbor said she wished she had more friends who would sit around and talk about things that matter.
Last night, another Tuesday evening for curriculum discussion, another neighbor and dear friend of ours stopped by our house before dinner. She is a caretaker for one of our elderly neighbors, and she lives with her father and other male relatives, so she is always glad to spend time with some other young women! She came by just to say hi and to bring us banana chips, her favorite snack. We invited her to stay for dinner as well as our curriculum discussion, and she was glad to stay. We enjoyed a good meal with lively discussion, and then our friend hopped up and offered to help with dishes! In our Mission Year experience we strive and challenge one another to serve and offer hospitality graciously, but often we find that our neighbors outdo us! After dinner was all cleaned up, we sat down again around our dining room table and began a discussion of Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited. This was a discussion about fear, deception, the oppressed, and how the relationship of Jesus fits in and around all of that. Again, although our neighbor had not read the book we were discussing, she was actively engaged in our conversation about all of these topics that are relevant to each of us.
At the end of the night as our friend was hugging each of us and preparing to head home, she said to us, "I really like you guys. No. I actually love you guys. Y'all are more than just neighbors or acquaintances. Y'all are my friends."
Over the past few weeks of being back in Houston, I have come to see our home and our table as a place for stories to be shared, meals to be enjoyed, and friendships to come alive. It is increasingly becoming a place of honesty and loyalty, of openness and grace. Around that table and within our home we are seeking the face of Jesus, and in doing so we are seeking to love one another better than ever. It is exciting to see this pouring out into our neighbors and the way they are opening up and sharing bits of their hearts with us as well.
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." -Matthew 6:19-21
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