Painting A Dream
by Ken Sweers
Immanuel Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, MI
Our Wednesday night children’s program here breaks a group of about 50 kids into ‘huddles’ of 5-7 kids each. This year while serving as a ‘huddle leader’, a couple of unchurched kid’s that mentors from our church have been working with ended up in my huddle. We recently organized a group that just began prayer-walking neighborhoods while utilizing the OA methods as we walk. I was in the group that was walking through the neighborhood of these two particular boys. It is a very marginalized neighborhood. The older of the two, a fifth-grader, was playing outside his house. I knew from the relationship that I had built with him that he lives in a paternal single-parent home and the conditions there are less than desirable. When he saw me he ran up to me and greeted me. “Hey Mr. Sweers, what are you doing here?” I told him that we were walking the neighborhoods to pray to God to come and fix things that needed fixing.
“What do you think needs fixing?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged.
“Aw, come on. If you knew God was ready to fix something in your neighborhood, ANYTHING, what would you ask him to fix?”
“My house.”
I was stunned. “Really … what exactly would you like Him to fix at your house?” I asked.
“My bedroom. I would like Him to paint my bedroom.”
“You know what?” I said. “We don’t need to pray about that. I can help you do that sometime this summer. Do you think your dad would mind?”
“No.”
“Good, I’ll talk to your dad sometime and we’ll set something up. Okay?”
You would have thought I just handed him the keys to a new car!
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Many of the people in these kinds of neighborhoods don’t even know how to love themselves. They have no personal identity, no pride, and few pleasures in life. Simple things like a little paint and personal attention can begin to restore their motivation. Once they learn how to love themselves first, perhaps then they will be open to learn how to love others – and maybe, with the power of the Kingdom, they can develop their own community identity, community pride, and the pleasure of belonging to such a community. It’s a dream that Jesus gave us. God speaks a lot through dreams.
April 24th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Categories: OA Stories
April Terry said
am April 25 2008 @ 1:08 pm
Ken,
I love this! I remember a few years ago, my husband’s Aunt Norma’s house had become so unsightly that the neighbors actually built high fences to “ward it off.” She was old and couldn’t afford to get it fixed on social security, and eventually she ended up having to enter into a loan with a group that would take her debt after her death. This left nothing to the family after her death.
At the time, I remember thinking, “Why don’t people of Christ see the need and fill it?”
I thought it would be great for a group of Christians to come up to a person’s door, knock, and ask if they could repaint the house and do some landscaping. What a loving message that would send to them–real needs fulfilled.
It caused me to consider starting a group at our church to receive lists of the needs out there in the local community and to organize people from the church who could get the job done–for free, but alas, I was meant to move on from where I was at the time and never had a chance to fly it.