lunes, agosto 28, 2017

Strangely Nice (and Maybe Just Strange) People.

The Bible tells us that the righteous are cautious in friendship.  (Pro. 12:26.)  The Bible also tells us to show hospitality to strangers.  (Heb.  13:2.) This is a conundrum, as it is a scary prospect to invite strangers into your life.  I was thinking about this this morning, and I thought of Elle, a woman who befriended me suddenly and fiercely when I was just a teen.  There was no getting-to-know-you time.  One day after church, she just came into the church library where I volunteered and handed me three beautiful, homemade hair clips.  That is how I wore my hair then.  She knew that.  I guess she had noticed me, made the hair clips for me, and waited for an opportunity to give them to me.  After that, we started talking-a lot, and I went to her house often.  She was quite a bit older than I.  (I have no idea how much older.  She seriously could have been anywhere from 30 to 60.)  We ran around town a lot, serving others in various ways.  One day, on a whim, she offered to buy me a $50 pair of shoes (an incredible sum of money for a teenager-and still a lot of money to me now) because the shoes were made in Israel.  She was my closest confidant for months . . . and then she suddenly vanished.  I called people she knew at the church, and they said she had mentioned maybe gong to Mexico to work at an orphanage.  That was over 25 years ago.  I still think of Elle every now and again, and I wonder if she was trying to view me as the daughter she never (as far as I know) had, or if she was young at heart and wanting to be my bestie, or if she was informally discipling me, and because of her sudden appearance in my life, and just as sudden disappearance, I have even wondered if she was an angel.  (The fact that her age was entirely undiscernable also adds to my angel theory.)  Or maybe she was just a strange and super-impulsive character.)  It is a very odd thing to think back on that brief time in my life.
We Christians are to open our arms to strangers, but we need to do so cautiously.  God does great and miraculous things through strangers, and all of our closest friends were strangers once, but how nice it is when the strangers we embrace turn into life long friends who become practically family.

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