Jenny Staff Johnson, The Exact Places

From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. Acts 17:26

"One of the best things you can do in life is introduce your friends to your other friends."

This statement of my pastor today caught my attention, because I had been thinking recently about just that topic. A couple from our church that we are very fond of recently announced that they're moving to Austin, a city I called home for seven years.

 Austin was where I got my first real taste of Christian community, and not incidentally, where I met my husband. When I heard that our friends were moving there, my first thought was not how we would miss them (though we definitely will), but all the great folks that I would be able to hook them up with.

The thought made me so cheerful, and it still does. Why? For one thing, it caused me to take a moment and remember some of the interesting people God placed in our path in a previous stage in life. Then it caused me to look them up, where I discovered what life changes—children new churches, new careers, etc.—they have experienced of late. And finally, the thought introducing my old friends to some kind, colorful & smart new Christians, whom they will no doubt be enriched by meeting.

Sometimes being a Christian feels too hard to me. I’m either not praying enough, not serving enough, not engaging culture thoughtfully or thoroughly enough, or maybe I’m spending too much money on clothes, etc., etc. But when I feel like that, I think about His people, the church, and I calm down a little bit.

The wide range of wonderfully weird (as well as wonderfully normal) characters I have been privileged to know is a testimony to the bigness of God’s power to save, his patience and persistence in doing so, and the wild diversity he allows to flourish in his creation. It’s individual Christians that have always kept me tied into God’s church when the big-ness of the Christian project threatened to overwhelm, or when hypocrisy from within and scorn from without made the church feel less than inviting.

So when God sends some of his people to a new place, I delight in imagining what work He may be planning for them; what relationships may flourish. Matching up people you think would appreciate each other is a celebration of God’s wonderful creative Providence, in which he shapes each of us uniquely for the development of his Kingdom and the redemption of our towns and cities.

© 2005, Jenny Staff Johnson.