“Most people really don’t want to get that close to God,” said the older woman to her new neighbors. Ruby, the woman who had lived in this neighborhood for almost 40 years, had been delighted to see a young couple, Alice and Greg, buy the house next door and move in. And immediately, out of her sense of Christian neighborliness (not to mention her loneliness), she had baked a peach cobbler and taken it over to them on their first evening in the new house. Eager to make friends in their new home, Alice and Greg had invited her in and together they ate the cobbler and chatted about where they were each from, what they did for a living, what they planned to do to and for their houses. When the conversation somehow shifted to church and faith, all three hung in there, determined to be open to one other and to share what God was doing with them.

            Greg and Alice were attending a growing congregation where talk about God’s activity was as plentiful as the peaches in Ruby’s cobbler. At their church, they sang of knowing intimately God and God’s Son, they spoke frequently and assuredly of God’s plans and God’s will, and they prayed fervently for healing and blessing.

            Ruby’s church, on the other hand, had been in the neighborhood for a long time. And while they sang about what a friend they had in Jesus, they were much more reticent to speak about God’s exact plans for their lives -- because they weren’t quite so sure about how God was working. When Alice confidently asserted that she knew exactly what God expected of her today and every day, when she joyfully proclaimed that she knew exactly who God was and what God wanted, when she began to detail her intimacy, Ruby could no longer listen politely. “Most people,” she exclaimed, “really don’t want to get that close to God!”

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