Intentional by Proxy

When people ask me 'How is it going?' about where we live I find it a difficult question to answer. Inherent in the question is an assumption that we are 'doing' something - we're not.  We're not running any groups or programmes, we're not even 'building relationships' very much - the only thing we are 'doing' is our life here.  I know that 'intentional' is a buzz word at the moment - especially when it comes to building community but I would like to propose a new buzz word:

'unintentional'

It fits much better with my personality and my lifestyle.  I am pretty lazy and I've got three kids, my husband runs his own business on the other side of town and most of the time we are focusing on surviving.  
And that's why I'm most grateful for living here - by living here we get the easy way out, the chance to help others often arrives, quite literally, on our doorstep.  Like the time two young girls knocked on our door late one night freaked out about the guy they thought was following them - Iain gave them a ride home.  

Or there's the young Samoan girl who lives a few doors down who occasionally turns up to use our phone because they haven't been able to pay their phone bill and been disconnected.  
She brought me this one day to say thanks.


Or the other young girl who asked to ring her midwife from our house to cancel an appointment because she had no bus money - I was going that way anyway so I got to give her a lift and pick up her boyfriend on the way. 
See how lucky we are?  We get the chance to help people in a way that costs us very little time and energy but makes a difference to them.  Sometimes I think it can't even count as serving God because it costs us so little (I'm a bit masochistic that way).