I went to Jerusalem … I had not told anyone what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:11-12).

If you were asked to name the most important people in your life, you could do that pretty easily.  How about the most important places?

Maybe it’s your childhood home or hometown, or a favorite vacation spot you return to year by year.  Perhaps you enjoy visiting the places where important parts of our national history occurred, or where you got engaged, or married, the hospital where your children were born, or the cemetery where loved ones lie.  There are so many places that matter to us, often in ways that are hard to put into words.

The Book of Nehemiah is about a place, Jerusalem.

For the Jewish people Jerusalem, particularly the Temple, was the place on earth where heaven and earth met and were joined, Creator and Creation coming together at this particular place.  They fully understood that God does not need “a house” to live in, that his presence is not limited by place or time.  At the same time, for Jerusalem to lie in ruins meant that there was a terrible rupture, a grievous wound, between heaven and earth.  In Biblical thought, this place matters, not just for the Jews; it matters for everyone, for the whole world.

Our God, who is not contained by space or time, nonetheless acts within our space and time, at particular times and places.  Jerusalem was such a place.

So is Chatham County, North Carolina.  It was God who put it into the heart of Nehemiah to do something for Jerusalem, to rebuild its ravaged walls.  The same God puts into our hearts some things to do for Chatham County.  Not because Chatham is better than Wake or Vance or Lee Counties, but because it is where God has planted Chatham Community Church.  Because Nehemiah was faithful in his day to the word and will of God (“rebuild the walls of Jerusalem”), we can become faithful in our times, in this place.  

It mattered what Nehemiah did, in and for Jerusalem.  It matters what we do, in and for Chatham County.

What are the important places for you in Chatham County?  What is God putting into your heart for these places—to care for them, preserve them, “rebuild” them in some way?