excuse me, but he loves you....

A friend of mine told me yesterday that she went up to a girl on the street and told her that Jesus loved her.

Firstly, I was struck by the boldness of someone, to just go up to an individual and speak to them a universal truth, that unfortunately does not come naturally to some [including me]. And then I thought about this some more and had a bit of a scare….

Why don’t more people come up to me on the street and tell me Jesus loves me? Do I repel others? Is it something I ate this morning? If this truth is so life changing, why am I not bombarded with strangers from all over the world, coming up to me and telling me the Good News? Why am I not bombarding strangers with it?

Jesus talks about the Sowing and Reaping principle.

The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him. Matthew 12v35

What a man sows, he reaps. You plant apple seeds, you get apples [and get this-it doesn’t actually grow inside you if you eat an apple core….I really should tell my Mom to stop telling me that…..I don’t think she knows!]. You plant wheat, you get a harvest of wheat. So if I want more people to be talking about the Good News, does this mean I have to do it myself?

Talking to strangers doesn’t come exactly natural to me. In fact, it is probably the one thing that I try to avoid the most in any given situation. Now, you can’t exactly ignore the lady behind the counter at the Supermarket, because that would be extremely impolite-and if my Mum has taught me anything, it is to be polite, because ‘manners don’t cost you anything’. But you can easily ignore the lady that sits next to you on the bus by reading you book or turning your ipod up louder [this is my method]. I noticed once, when I lived in the North Shore, that almost everyone that takes the Sea Bus to downtown is always excruciatingly attached to an extremely good book. Or I will assume they were good books because no one ever looked up from one to stare at the stranger that was cramped unnaturally close to them, both opposite and in front.

And what gets me the most is that there are people who just love talking to others, and they don’t appear to have faith in Jesus at all. On my way to a posh mall in West Vancouver, I witnessed a conversation between two very recently met strangers on the bus. A girl around 16 was sitting listening to some sort of heavy punk music [I could hear it myself and was quite enjoying it] when a lady came in and sat herself right next to her; despite there being a numerous amount of empty seats elsewhere. They instantly got into a conversation and the woman even asked to listen to her headphones!! They exchanged names, job titles [one was a student, the other lady owned the Booster Juice shop on the North Shore] and taste in music. It was quite an experience just watching the whole scene. And I questioned myself. Why don’t I do that more often? It really does not take much to start a conversation surely?

So a few weeks later, I sat next to this dear old lady on the bus [after shopping again…] and said something like ‘gosh, isn’t it lovely weather?’ [Of course, a very natural topic to me, being British!] And we were off. We talked about skin care in the sun, the difference between the North Shore and Downtown, and she told me the history of her vacations, how she had travelled all around the world to go on different holidays. I told her why I was in Vancouver and we talked about all kinds of grownup things on our 20-minute bus ride back to 15th and Lonsdale.

I’d done it. I had officially broken my barrier in talking to strangers. Since then, I have found myself having all kinds of weird conversations with all sorts of people, talking about music, London [because apparently, according to most Canadians, that’s where everyone comes from in England] healing from God, I even spoke to a women who was, at the time, called Margaret, but wanted to change her name to Robert.

Jesus calls me to ‘go and make disciples of all nations…teaching them the commandments I have taught you.’ Matthew 28v16 onwards. I never realised that to tell people about Jesus I have to actually speak about Him.
I was inspired by Ali’s confession of Jesus to a girl on the street. I want to do that more. But my problem is…I have to actually talk to people…….!