We showed up on the beach one day to go play and there was a ginormous crab just hanging out down by the shoreline. We took pics of him. We messed with him a little. We marveled at how he reacted with us and in some cases tried to scare us off. He was so cute!!! But, I was concerned for his "safety" being exposed out on the middle of the huge beach so we dug a little hole for him for him to sorta' "hide" in.
After we had our initial "interaction" with him, both I and my oldest daughter kept just checking on him. Looking back at him. Keeping a wary eye out for birds. On more than one occasion we said things like, "I hope no birds eat our crab." And, that struck me as significant...
"Our crab"
What made this crab...one among thousands "our crab?"
It was the fact that we'd met him...interacted with him..."cared" for him...and had a limited sort of "relationship" with him because of it. He went from being "a" crab to being "our" crab.
I thought, how well it would do the church to get more involved with people...interact with them..."care" for them...so that the world becomes "our" world and not "the" world.
Jesus said to Peter, "Feed my sheep"...
Feeding is a way of caring.
What if we listened to Jesus and spent our time, instead of <cough> blogging about stuff...playing on facebook...and "preaching" at the world with our bumperstickers, t-shirts and crafty status updates...and instead went next door and said to the widow lady living there, "Is there anything I can do for you today?"
And, Charlie? Whatever happened to him?
Finally, we grabbed him in a bucket and took him back up to where all the crab hide-outs seem to be and we let him go up there so he could find his hole again.
(Actual photo: not an actor)
