40acts: Ready to ActSample

Act 14: Befriend

The vulnerable, lost and lonely are all around us but easily slip under the radar. Today, let’s forego the chance to chat with those we’re familiar with and instead focus on someone new. Look out for the newcomer or the one hovering on the fringes. We’re sending a message, loud and clear: I noticed you. God sees you. You matter.

‘The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners’ (Isaiah 61:1). The Bible makes it clear that the Lord has a bias for those on the margins, those that society glosses over in its lists of achievements and celebrity. ‘The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow,’ and he still does. In the prophetic literature of the Bible, those books that speak out the depths of the Lord’s heart into the worst of our reality, we learn this: the overlooked are the first the good news is preached to. And they are the first rebuilders of society (Isaiah 61). 

Those last through the doors are the first on his list (Matthew 20). If God is pouring out a blessing on those people, wouldn’t we want to get involved with them? What would stop us from getting around that? Isaiah 61 is God’s invitation to get involved. As we reach out to those furthest from the in-crowd, we step into the life of the kingdom, the very heart of God as he pours out his best and his first on those we like to ignore. 

Think of times you’ve been lonely or lost. Maybe you’ve been lingering for minutes by the coffee table at a new church. Maybe you’ve been broken up with, left out of a party, or suffered the loss of close family. What has someone done to reach out and connect with you, that really stuck with you? Today, you’re going to be the person to reach out and do that for someone else.