The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.  And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else … he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live …God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 

(Acts 17:24-27)

Here’s a link to the entire passage!

Have you ever ended up somewhere you never intended to go?  Found yourself unexpectedly among people you didn’t know all that well, maybe didn’t even like all that much?  

Wherever Paul found himself, he saw himself as a neighbor.  And a big part of being a good neighbor, as far as Paul was concerned, was seeking opportunities to share God’s Good News with newfound neighbors.

As we have seen throughout this week’s Connect Devotionals, Paul took time to get to know the local culture, met his neighbors on their turf, worked to find common ground with them, all with the goal of presenting the good news of Jesus and the resurrection (Acts 17:18).  As part of his presentation, Paul stressed that it is God who determines our times and our places.

Still true: we are where we are because that’s where God has placed and planted us.  There may well be aspects of our current “times and places” that we may not like and did not choose.  Whether our times and places are pleasant or not, God wants us to pay attention to the neighbors into whose midst he has plunked us.  We’re where we are for God’s reasons!

God wants these maybe-unchosen-by-us neighbors to know some things, some things that whatever gods they currently worship can’t tell them: that the One God is the Creator of everything, including each and every one of them; that this God does not need them to “prove themselves” by successfully performing demanding religious rituals (temple-building, idol-manufacturing and worshipping, sacrifices and so on); that this God wants to be known by them, and therefore has come near to them in Jesus so that they can know him; that this God who gives life to all isn’t ever going to let Death get the last word.

We don’t need to be skilled debaters or dynamic public speakers.  We don’t need to be Bible experts or “church officials” or “ordained missionaries.”

We simply need to look around, start to notice our neighbors, begin to listen to what they’re saying, pay attention to their hopes and fears, notice what they’re trying to build (Temples?  Secure fortresses?  Pleasure palaces?) and why --

-- and find the unique ways in which the God who has placed us where we are is also the God who equips us to share the good news of Jesus with whatever neighbors we encounter.  Yes, we’ll each do it in our distinct ways and styles, God working through us according to the manner in which he has uniquely created and shaped each one of us.

But he wants them to know him, and has made us part of that process.

It’s just the neighborly thing to do!

Sharing the Good News with a neighbor does not require us to say everything God wants a neighbor to know.  What is one thing you could say or do this week that might point a neighbor in a Jesus direction?