Sherry is a single mother with three children, ages 5, 7, and 10. She has a 50 hour-per-week job working at just above minimum wage and struggle to keep her family afloat. Her day starts at 6am when she awakes and starts getting ready for work. She wakes her children and shuffles them through the bathroom, making sure that they are clean, dressed, and ready on time for their bus. She throws cereal in bowls, hurries them through their breakfast, makes sure they have all their school materials, and rushes them out the door at 6:15am, just in time for the bus. She jumps in her car and battles her way to her 7am job through the morning’s first bout of traffic.
She arrives at work just in time to punch in before 7am, and she starts in on her ten-hour workday. She makes it through work, but by the time she’s headed home through 5pm rush-hour traffic the day is beginning to take its toll on her. She gets close to home, where her kids are with a babysitter who stays with them from the time they get out of school to the time she gets home. Sherry pays the sitter and begins rallying her kids to get ready for supper. John, the 10-year-old, asks what is for supper. Sherry tells him that it’s spaghetti, and he is not happy.
“We had spaghetti last night,” he whines. ”We always eat spaghetti.”
Mary, the 7-year-old, and Sam, the 5-year-old, join in the complaining and Sherry finds herself ready to pull her hair out. She has had a long day at work and just wants to sit down and rest. She finishes the spaghetti, the kids eat it begrudgingly, and then they ask what is for dessert.
Dessert. Sherry knew that she had forgotten something. She didn’t have a lot of money to spend on food for the kids, but this was dessert night. She was supposed to have stopped by the store on her way home and bought some cookies and it had completely slipped her mind. She is about to throw her hands up in frustration when the doorbell interrupts her thoughts. She pauses, wondering who it could be. She rises from the table and looks through the peephole of her front door to see Elizabeth, her next door neighbor, standing patiently there. She unlocks the door and greets Elizabeth. They make small-talk for a minute when the children begin to whine again. Sherry is about to apologize to Elizabeth about her children when Elizabeth smiles and holds out a plate. Sherry had not noticed that Elizabeth had anything with her when she came, and she is a bit confused as she grabs the plate.
“My husband and I were baking some cookies today, and we thought of you all,” Elizabeth started. ”We have been looking for ways to let our neighbors know that we love them and care about them, and you specifically crossed our minds tonight as we were preparing dessert for our family. So we made some extra cookies and wanted to share the wealth. We want you to know that we’re just next door and would love for you to come over anytime just to hang out. We really want to get to know our neighbors better.”
Sherry has to work to close her mouth. She is absolutely amazed that anyone would do something like this. She has only met Elizabeth in passing, but she knows that Elizabeth is a Christian. Her gut reaction is to be cynical and wonder what Elizabeth wants from her, but as their conversation ends, Elizabeth gives Sherry her phone number and tells her to call if she ever needs anything or if she is in need of a babysitter on the fly or if she just wants to talk. Then Elizabeth simply smiles, says a last goodbye and leaves.
Sherry closes her door and looks down at the cookies in her hand. She is going to be a hero to her kids tonight because of Elizabeth. She is shocked at the kindness of her neighbor and is determined to find time to talk with her again.
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So what is the point of this story? ”The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough” (Matthew 13:33). Fixing cookies is a way of loving your neighbor. It is a way of working leaven into the dough of people’s lives. Their lives are flat and lifeless and when the Kingdom starts working in that flat and lifeless place, like leaven, it causes change. When people are influenced by a little of Christ’s selfless love, something in them yearns to have more of that love. It is our job as Christ-followers to spread leaven into the dough, and this can be done by a simple act of taking some cookies to your neighbor and beginning a friendship that reflects Christ’s friendship with us.
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