Bloom Where You Are Planted

It all starts with an idea!

It has been nearly a year since I retired from professional ministry.  But that doesn't mean that we have stopped being servants.  It simply means that I am no longer spending time preparing sermons and services.  This is giving us more time to connect with people we meet.  Paul writes in Romans 13:9, "The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,' and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"  This pretty much sums up the entire Christian life.

Del Tacket in his course, The Engagement Project, points out that our "neighbor" literally means our neighbor, the person or persons who live in close proximity to us.  God providentially puts us where we are living and puts others around us who need to see Him.  When we moved to Lititz, PA it was impossible to find a house as every house that came on the market had multiple offers within a few days and sold for substantially higher amounts than the listing price.  We came to the conclusion that we would have to rent for awhile.  Our realtor suggested that we try a new apartment complex.  We did and were able to move into what one travel magazine once called "the coolest small town in America."  We believed that God put us here for a reason.

The first thing that confirmed that was a message from my cousin that a couple whose daughter had been married to her son lived in the same complex.  We met them and through them met several other people, a single woman who lived in the same apartment complex and another couple who lived nearby. With them we began a small group to do The Engagement Project.  God added another believer who was a friend of the single woman who lived in our complex and one more couple whom we met at a choir rehearsal at church.  It just so happened that the woman was in the same class with me in my college.  Of the 10 of us 8 attended evangelical colleges, 2 at Nyack, 2 at Gordon, 3 at the King's College and 1 at Wheaton. We also currently attend 4 different churches.

But that is not all.  We were committed to love our neighbors as ourselves and to look for those with whom God wanted us to connect.  Then one day a local cable company sponsored a free ice cream and cupcake social outside our building.  There we met a young couple from India.  Anne and I had served as missionaries in Sri Lanka (the tear shaped island off the coast of India) and visited India while we were there.  I have since been back to India on two short term mission trips.  We immediately felt a connection with this couple though we are from different age groups.  Since then we have kind of adopted them as our grandchildren and they have adopted us as their grandparents.  The young lady is from a Muslim-Hindu family and the young man is from a Hindu family, all of whom are back in India.  We have spent holidays together, played games together, ate together, watched movies together and she has come to church with us on Christmas Eve and Easter and he came on Easter.  We have truly come to love them like family and enjoy being around them. 

We have finally found a beautiful small home in Lititz which by God's design we were able to purchase without competing bids and it is only 5 minutes from the apartments.  We plan to continue with the relationships we have made back there and have already begun to build new relationships with the people who live around us now.  It is not so very hard to bloom where you are planted.  God makes a way.

In these days of hostility and conflict in our nation Christians have the opportunity to stand out as different by simply loving our neighbors as ourselves.  Jesus told us to let our light shine and this is one of the best and easiest ways to do it.

William Fischer