As children we are always taught to be wary of strangers. But when does that change? Stranger Danger is real, but so are the opportunities that we miss when we block the world out. After all, friends were once strangers and you never know where life may lead after starting up that initial conversation.
Today’s Challenge:
I’m super-shy: Try stepping out of your comfort zone and speaking to one new person today. It might be someone new to a forum online, your supermarket cashier, a bus driver, or a colleague you haven’t spoken to before.
Feeling bolder: Make an effort to deepen the relationship you have with people you see every day but don’t really know: shopkeepers, bus drivers, postal staff, office cleaners. Ask their names, share a story or two, and take some time to find out a little bit more about them
Going all out: If this challenge ticks your box, try and spend as much time as you can talking to strangers. Strike up a conversation in an unusual place. Make the awkward less awkward.
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Matthew 25: 35
Do you talk to strangers? Often? Sometimes? Never? From childhood, we are warned about the risks of meeting strangers which could vary from potential danger, exploitation or unsuitability to simply annoyance and inconvenience. We also worry that we will annoy others and encroach on their personal space. It can feel much easier just to relax and talk to people you already know and who are ’safe’ and similar and don’t present risk. In churches it is particularly easy to stick with those we feel comfortable with.
Jesus constantly encountered new people and was open to those who needed him and even those who attacked him – he was out there. He did suggest being as ’wise as serpents and innocent as doves’ but he and his disciples stretching down through history reached out to people all over the world.
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