Like this:

There is someone I see quite often, I pass this person maybe once, maybe several times a week, often in a place where there is no-one else, but they never seem to see me. I will always smile, nod, maybe even say “hello”, but this person tries to keep their head down, avoid eye contact and if they do look at me when I smile, or nod or hear me say “hello”, they totally blank me.

Of course, it’s not that they haven’t seen me, they have, but they are very actively choosing to ignore me. Why? I know that I have never had any dealings with them (baptism, wedding, funeral, etc) so I can’t have upset or offended them, in fact I have never had the opportunity to talk with them so I cannot have said anything that could have so distanced them from me. They have simply chosen to have nothing to do with me. Maybe you know someone like that – odd isn’t it?

And that’s how many people are with God, some rant and rail against a God who allows suffering, or who hasn’t supplied them with what they want, but many simply choose to have nothing to do with God – they have never actually taken the time to acknowledge God, find out who he is, what he’s like, how much he loves them; they keep their head down or turned away and if God ever gets too close at times like Easter, Christmas, funerals or the like, they simply blank him. How that must break God’s heart.

So, what to do? Well, if we know people who blank God then we should pray for them, pray for their hearts of stone to become hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 11:19), pray for their unhearing ears and unseeing eyes to opened (Matthew 13:13) by God’s Holy Spirit so that they might truly know who God is. At St. Andrew’s and St. Michael’s we always seek to make the truth of God known in accessible ways which are faithful to his living word; the Bible, so why not encourage them to come with – or if you are that person, why not come along and explore for yourself?

And as for me? Well, maybe I should be bold, walk up to this person, stick out my hand and say, “Hello, perhaps we can be friends?” after all, that’s what God did by sending his Son Jesus in to this world to be with us, die for us and rise again to new and eternal life.

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