Mark Sorensen I read a story recently about a stretch of road known as the Million Dollar Highway, located in western Colorado. It’s a long stretch of highway that maneuvers through difficult terrain and high altitudes. As a result, one might assume that is where the nickname came from, due to the cost of paving and building such a highway. However, that’s not the case at all. Fun fact: it’s known as the Million Dollar Highway because of what’s located inside the roadway. You see, waste material from the ore in gold mines was actually used as the bed for that highway but not all the gold dust and nuggets were removed by the mining processes available at that time. This means that there is a partial roadbed of gold (probably worth a lot more than a million dollars) that thousands drive along on a daily basis with absolutely no idea of what’s under the rubber of their car tires.
Come on. That’s amazing.
Our current Harvest series, Block Party, is about taking the great command of loving your neighbor seriously. It’s challenging each of us to be intentional about investing in the four homes – the four neighbors who live closest to us –and developing an authentic and loving relationship with our neighbors. We did the math. With 2,500 people attending the Harvest services on a weekly basis, if each of us took this challenge seriously, we could impact 10,000 people. That’s 10 percent of the greater Woodlands population just simply caring for and loving the people who live closest to us.
Back to that Million Dollar Highway, and thinking about the numbers of people who have no idea what they’re driving on. Is it possible that our neighbors who live on the other side of our fences are living in hopelessness and don’t know the life-changing, hope-restoring, gospel-transforming love of Jesus Christ? Perhaps we are where we are because God intends for us to literally walk next door and show them the love of Christ we possess in our own walk and in our own lives.
Paul says in Ephesians 5, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
So let’s be bold. Let’s risk. Let’s walk next door and introduce ourselves to those neighbors we may not know and, in doing so, let’s walk in the way of love and live out of the very love that Christ has for us all!
