Back Roads To Belonging By Kristen StrongSample

Kristen Strong: Back Roads to Belonging Devotional Day 5

“Do the Hard Work”

Scripture reading: Proverbs 6:1-11

When we expend effort on others that we hope will produce fruit, sometimes it flat-out won’t. Sometimes God has a different kind of fruit in mind, away from the obvious. He may want to grow something inside us through our “follow-through,” for example. No matter the results, we may have to crawl out to the edge of the limb.

Whether something substantial dangles off the branch is up to the Lord. Sometimes God wants us to be a simple road-stop blessing in someone’s day rather than a regular destination. We will save ourselves a lot of anxiety if we (in the words of the great theologian Carrie Underwood) let Jesus take the wheel on the specifics.

Through effort and practice, I have become pretty comfortable “making the first move” in friendship with someone. But in spite of this, sometimes I still find myself alone in a crowd, and I can’t help but think it would be lovely—really lovely—if I didn’t have to make the first move. It would be fresh-air-fabulous if just one person would do the work of seeking me out first, so connecting would feel less like a chore.

There’s just no way to get around it: making friends is hard. Expanding our belonging place is hard. It takes purpose and effort. It takes work. Quite often it takes more time than I’d like.

There’s also no way to get around this: it’s always worth it to keep working at it. 

Reading through Scripture one day, I was struck with a new angle to Proverbs’s advice on learning from the ant who diligently gathers her food. While I usually associate the wisdom and warnings of Proverbs like this one with one’s willingness to work and provide, I read it here as referring to putting hard work into developing friendships and building a belonging place. 

If we put in the time and effort God asks, we will one day gather our own harvest of life-giving, spirit-building, heart-helping friendships.

Belong blessing: May your efforts to go first in friendship lead to a deeper sense of belonging. But if they don’t, may you have peace in knowing that, with time, your follow-through will bring about good, good things from the Lord.