When my wife and I lived in San Francisco, we had a shy and alarming neighbor.  He was a young, slight, Chinese-American man named Marty.  I think I intimidated Marty.  I'm big and loud-my guess is that that package was just too much for him, so when I'd greet him, he'd usually avert his eyes as he mumbled hi and made his way into his apartment.  But Grace would have better luck with him, so she was the one who decided to do something when, night after night, we heard his racking coughs.  And when we noticed the Meals on Wheels service that would leave a dinner on his doorstep each night.  And when we noticed the sores that seemed to be multiplying on his face and arms. 

Correctly reading that Marty would not respond well to a direct question, even from her, Grace slipped a note under his door that said, in effect, "Given the thin walls of our apartment building, we've noticed that it seems like you haven't been feeling well and we just wanted to say that we care."  She baked him banana bread. 

The next time he saw her, he thanked her for the note and the bread, and he soon invited her in to talk.  Yes, he had AIDS.  Yes, it was late-stage.  No, his parents wouldn't visit him.  Over the next few months, Marty and Grace had many long talks.  He let her pray with him, a first in his experience.  He asked her advice.  He took her to his favorite Chinese restaurant.  He told her a fair number of chilling, personal stories.  He wrote her appreciative notes.  And then he died.

Many of my friends and I have been thinking more about our neighbors these days.  It's struck us that we and most everyone we know tends to fill up our lives with whomever we can-friends and family, maybe one or two close workmates.  We're grateful for all of those people!

But we've also found ourselves haunted by an extended metaphor Jesus, in so many words, seemed to draw.  Picture an island.  It's your island and the people who live there are all those folks we just mentioned-friends and family.  Picture, then, a moat around the island.  Over the moat is everyone else on earth.  Call these "optional people."  You don't have to relate in any depth to any of them if you'd rather not.  No one's making you meet that person two doors down, and it's not as if you're not already plenty busy, thank you very much.  In his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seems to suggest that-while of course we love everyone on our island, much of the real grist of life comes as we cross the moat.  But almost no one does that.

This has so gripped some of my friends that they're doing strange things.  One decided to invite a hundred neighbors over for breakfast.  By the end of the morning, there were endless stories of people being shocked at who was living right next to them-fascinating, accomplished people.  And also people who could use some help-say, women who didn't feel all that safe walking home from the T at night.  Before the breakfast was over, plans had been made to address that, and there was clamor for more of these gatherings.

I know probably a dozen stories from the last month of friends who discovered and decided to address some need that someone "over their moat" had.  Like the couple whose neighbors were raising disabled kids and who hadn't had a date together in years-my friends gave them a gift certificate to a pricey restaurant and free babysitting for the evening.  Or the man who discovered that the friendly guy down the street actually desperately wanted to find one American who would sponsor him as he tried to get citizenship. 

Grace and I have been excited to start doing our best to host regular "family fun nights" of folks we meet in our neighborhood but never have the opportunity to really sit down and talk with.  A couple weeks back, we had maybe 25 kids and 20 adults over for the night, and I connected with some of the most interesting people who were living right up the street from me.  God willing, we'll see how many people get sick of being invited back again and again and again.

You've got an awesome island!  You've got friends and-if you're lucky enough-family all around you.  Grace and I get the great opportunity to have about a thousand people over for church each week, many of whom are kind enough to be our friends.  But I wonder if there's something to be said that, even in the face of all that bounty, there are surprising and irreplaceable riches to be found just on the other side of your moat.