Familiar Stranger
Theme of the Week: Can You Relate?
Keith Miller
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: If we don't love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen? (1 John 4:20). Bonus Reading:1 John 4:19-21
On the way to work I stopped for gasoline. The attendant smiled and said, "Good morning, Mr. Miller." I was sort of shocked to realize I'd seen this man dozens of times yet never noticed him as a person. He knew my name; I hadn't the vaguest idea what his was. And I was the Christian witness; this might be a person to whom God had introduced me to love for Him. Glancing quickly at the name tag on his uniform, I said, "Good morning, Charlie."
As I signed the credit card receipt, I tried to think of some natural thing to say to a man whom I'd ignored for three years to let him know I was interested in him as a person. Because suddenly I was. "Say, Charlie, do you have a family?"
He stopped and looked at me a second. When he saw I really wanted to know, a smile spread across his face. "Do I have a family?" He pulled out his wallet with pictures of nine children.
This was the beginning of what became a first-name friendship. One of his kids later got seriously injured in an accident. When I read about it in the paper, I could go as a friend and find out what might be done.
—Keith Miller in The Edge of Adventure
My Response: Someone I encounter routinely whom I could take an interest in is …
Thought to Apply: You'll make more friends in two months being interested in others than in two years trying to get others interested in you.
—Dale Carnegie
Adapted from The Edge of Adventure (Word, 1974) by permission.
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.
1 of 1
 share this page
Lord, help me to serve someone else by caring about him.
Men of Integrity
Connect with God | Transform my Mind | Live by His Power
Relate Better | Make an Impact
Home | Archives | Contact Us
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Try an Issue of Men of Integrity
Free!
|
 |
|
No credit card required. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only. Click here for International orders.
If you decide you want to keep Men of Integrity coming, honor your invoice for just $19.95 and receive five more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The trial issue is yours to keep, regardless.
Give Men of Integrity as a gift
Buy 1 gift subscription, get 1 FREE!
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| 
RSS Feed
