Karma, luck, fate , chance...I call it God's will and/or His blessing. I am talking about the people that we are in contact with on a daily or weekly basis. Specifically, I am talking about my BiC's and SiC's.
Our church is a small church with about 300 members. Like most churches, about 1/2 of you membership shows up for service any given Sunday. Most, if not all my friends in Texas are Christians, many of them from our church. When I think about the backgrounds of all of my friends, it staggers me how we came together. We come from all walks of life and from many different states, yet we all ended up in a small country church in North Central Texas located in a town of about 5000 people.
Several of my friends are ex-military. Most of my friends were not born in Texas. I have friends who were born in Switzerland and Mexico and others from almost every state in the Union. One of my friends was a lawyer in NYC (a public defender) and a few were born in Harlem. We have people in medical, engineering, IT, finance, some who are self-employed, construction, sales...the list goes on. They have all been put together into one church. Scripture tells us that we (as Christians) are like parts of the body. All are needed and none can work on their own.
Since our church is small and relatively poor, we need all the talents and skills we can gather. We do not recruit people to join our church (Hey this guy owns a garage and we do not have any mechanics in the congregation...let's get him!). The Spirit of God does that for us.
Being on a campus of aging buildings, we are always in need of people who are good carpenters and handymen. It so happens we have 2 very talented men in our church who perform/lead 90% of those activities. When our praise and worship (the music ministry) team was struggling, 2 talented singers joined our church to give a boost.
We had several elderly people who had PC's, but needed updating or replacement and tutoring. Thanks to the God given talent in our church, a few of us were able to help them out. I offer my help (within reason) to many of our members. Most of them have been seniors, but a few are my age. All of them have been very gracious and usually fix or offer to buy me lunch/dinner.
I really could go on and on how we (the church body) have helped each other on many occasions to move, plan weddings, do home repair, work on computer equipment, watch kids and/or pets, home sit, pick up mail/newspapers when on vacation, or just opened the doors of our home to friends to share a meal and good conversation.
Why do we do this? Jesus told us of the two great commandments: 1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your, mind, and your soul and 2) Love your neighbor as you love yourself. When I think of things that would be nice for people to help us with, I immediately think of what I can do to bless them.
I realize a large number of you are not overly religious and may not even be Christians, but I would like you to think about something. What if there was a global *law* that you had to treat people in a manner in which you would like to be treated. Imagine how much nicer life would be.
I am not asking you to get deep and argue that some people just are unhappy and expect to be treated poorly. That is a conversation for another time. I am just asking you too look at your own life and see if you are treating those around you the way *you* would like to be treated, not the way *they* are treating you. You may be surprised.
A couple of examples from my life...take them as you see fit:
1) I mow my neighbors grass for $25. I could cut it more often than I do and I could charge her more because the price of gas and lawn bags has gone up, but I don't because I would not want someone to do that to me and my neighbor has already had to face that with a lawn service.
2) When I do PC repair, my rate is $25 an hour. I do not charge a minimum nor do I charge for partial hours. I tend to give away a chunk of time free on many occasions. I do this because I would not want someone taking advantage of me, so I will not take advantage of others. Now do not get me wrong. I am not a door mat to be walked all over. If I am taken advantage of from a client, I stop supporting them. I just refuse to do the work. I know I lose some money, but I stand on my values.
These are business choices, but I could have easily picked other areas as well. I just exercise some common sense and treat people like I would like to be treated. That is not mean I am perfect. I do make mistakes, but I do not purposely do things to be unfair.
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