Thursday, April 3, 2025
“Meet Someone New”
Today’s Challenge for Lent is to Meet Someone New, which ought to be easy enough. Most people probably don’t know us, despite what we tend to think. Therefore, it never hurts to introduce ourselves to someone if we’re not sure. In fact, introducing ourselves to someone is a good and Godly thing because it might be removing the burden of remembering from someone else’s task-maximized brain.
Do you know anyone who struggles to remember names? Lots of people are not good with names, so if this describes you, you’re in the majority. Most people, even plenty of those with whom we have contact, can’t remember. Not sure about this? Try an experiment: For the first half of the day, see if you can name each and every person you come into visual or audible contact with. Then, after you encounter the first person that you can’t name, make a pledge to yourself that the next person will be your person to meet today.
I know. This probably sounds bizarre. But here’s the truth: Most people are kind, and most people are probably interested in knowing your name. It makes us feel good when our names are spoken. It makes us feel special, valued, and important.
Since today’s Lenten Challenge is to meet someone new, our target audience should really be a person we don’t know at all. However, as an additional option, let’s include the people we may already know but we can’t call them by name. Let’s figure out their name and use it the next time we see them! We might discover something special and Godly in the process!
“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2, NIV)
