Post 8: A Neighbor in Need
Image: AI generated image of two guys talking in the hallway of an apartment building.
Post Summary: In the previous post, I discussed the growing uncertainty of my job security given rising pressure at work and how focusing on the Lord during that time brought about peace. In this post, I talk about meeting one of my neighbors that lived in my building and how I began our friendship showing the love of Christ.
In late April 2024, I met a neighbor from my building who had just returned from an extended stay in the hospital due to an injury, resulting surgery, and a few weeks of recovery in the hospital. During one of our first conversations, he mentioned that he needed help to get his apartment cleaned up because he had been in the hospital and he was too weak at this point to do much bending that was necessary to clean the place up. In his extended absence, his place was falling into serious neglect but really looked like it had not been cleaned in years!
I offered to help him get things cleaned up, and over the next couple of weeks, I would help with various cleaning tasks around the apartment and pick up groceries for him. Regularly, he developed a pattern of asking for financial assistance for various things, and sometimes even became a little pushy about when or if I would give him any money. Eventually, he opened up to me about various negative things that happened in his past, and a few of his current health struggles outside of the immediately obvious.
This seemed like a perfect opportunity to display the love of Christ to a neighbor in need. Sometimes in these early conversations, I would ask him questions about whether had any religious beliefs and try to witness to him about Christ. In those conversations, he would either claim to know more about the Most High than I could know because he was older (and supposedly more wise) and had been reading the bible since before I was born. He would often make claims that the Bible says something that seemed a bit unusual. Whenever I would press him to produce specific verses that could speak to the points he was trying to make, he could not produce any verses despite seeming very sure of himself about the biblical claims he was making. Sometimes, days after a discussion, he would randomly text me with a bible verse and say “see this is that thing I was telling you about”, trying to make it seem like he had certain knowledge about God, but even then he was just cherry-picking verses to make the bible agree with him. On one occasion, he said something like “ how could a young person like you not accept my wisdom”, to which I replied “age does not make a person wise.”
On the other hand, sometimes he'd get irritated when I would bring up anything about Jesus and would say things like “don't bring your Jesus around today. I would also talk with him about having a relationship with God through salvation in Christ and would share various scriptures and videos about salvation. He would say the videos didn't really mean anything meaningful to him. He would sometimes say that he has a relationship with the Most High but then when I would offer to read the bible with him, sometimes he'd say he hates reading the bible and we don't need to read the bible to have a relationship with God. So, confusingly, he hates reading the bible, but at the same time, he's been reading the bible since before I was born???
Needless to say, he has been a very confusing person at times. He has turned out to be a person that is very full of himself and thinks his wisdom is the best wisdom. He often says contradictory things and acts like he is far from knowing the only True and Living God! He will remain in my prayers and with God's help, maybe one day he will be brought into the truth of Christ!
Stay tuned for the next post, where I'll be discussing my first thoughts and misunderstanding about baptism that lead me to go on a mad dash to find a church that would baptize me as soon as humanly possible.