“It seemed so simple then: Just move to the city and watch God show up. But I had no idea at the time what it meant,” writes Alex Davidson, who moved with his family into an apartment complex to live and minister among refugees. “I am still discovering what it means to have my life intertwined with the lives of my refugee friends, but when my kids jump on the couch with excitement because their Burundian neighbors are coming over to play, I know that I am in a place called home.”

“Yusuf, you can’t threaten your neighbor just because he looked at your wife.” Yusuf stared back at me, his eyes aflame. He was shaking with fury, and for a moment I thought he might explode in rage towards me. I felt knots in my stomach but trying to speak calmly, I explained. “I know this man may have been looking at your wife. Maybe he has a chyorniy syerdtsye.” My Russian vocabulary is limited, especially when it comes to describing abstract thoughts, but Yusuf knew what I meant by “dark heart.”

Yusuf made it clear to me as we stood in the winter day outside of our apartment complex that if the intruder ever showed up again, he would have a very real physical problem. In broken English, Yusuf explained, “I love my wife, my children. Me Muslim. This man, what he do, this is haram(unclean). This for Muslim, very serious!” His statement was loaded with meaning. What was at stake was the honor of Yusuf’s family, something worth killing and dying for.

“My brother, you must not follow the anger in your heart,” I said. “You must follow the love. If you follow the anger, this man wins. Sheitan (Satan) wins. You will go to jail, and your wife will be alone. But if you follow love, you will let God settle things with this man, and you will take care of your wife.”

Exhausted from his own tirade, Yusuf – more to honor our friendship than to agree with me – smiled weakly and said, “Okay.” We would talk again later.

Neighbors
After I returned home from this adrenaline-pumping encounter, I found myself wondering if I had loved Yusuf well. Jesus told us to love our neighbor. But what does that really mean? This is the question that has plagued my life recently.

It’s been 10 years since I first read that small book that changed my thinking about what it means to be a neighbor. In Return Flight: Community Development through ReNeighboring our Cities, Atlanta counselor and community developer Bob Lupton writes that “becoming neighbor” is key to Christian efforts to redevelop our blighted American cities. Kingdom-minded Christians, he says, need to leave the sacrosanct comfort of the suburbs and re-enter the areas of the city that suffer for lack of hope and prophetic voice.

Our Christian message can be heard, says Lupton, only when we become neighbors, only when we live “incarnationally,” making ourselves vulnerable to the same threats and being inspired by the same visions of hope as the people next door.

Moving in
The seeds planted through Bob Lupton’s challenge took several years to push through the soil of time, but in 2005, my wife and I saw the sprout and decided God was leading us into an apartment-based ministry. With the blessing of our local church and a commissioning from The Mission Society, we sold our little townhome and moved as missionaries into the city. Because we had a growing heart for Muslims (we had been on several short-term mission trips with our church to Muslim areas of the world), we picked a city that had a large Muslim population. Bridgeport* is one of the many cities in America that is growing because it receives refugees from around the world. Every year, the U.S. State Department invites more than 100,000 immigrants to have a second chance at life, after having been chased out of their countries by ethnic cleansing, war, religious persecution, and the like.

In the town that would become our home, 20,000 refugees have been “re-settled” since 1992. They come from places like Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Bosnia, Burma, Burundi, Congo, Bhutan, and Afghanistan. Pick almost any conflict-ridden country that has been in the news in the last 15 years and you’ll find someone from there in our small city. They live there for a few years, close to their refugee resettlement agencies (like World Relief, International Rescue Committee, and Catholic Social Services), making the huge cultural adjustments that come from being uprooted and replanted in a foreign land. Once they become more self-sufficient and established, they typically move to other parts of the state to find better jobs, better schools, and better homes. Currently, there are about 4,000 refugees in our municipality of 10,000.

It is in this milieu of whole people groups going through culture-shock that my wife and I find countless opportunities to learn how to be good neighbors. The collision of conflicting cultural and religious values, the frustration of a struggling U.S. economy and unresolved tension of having lost a precious homeland, can create a perfect storm of trauma and despair and, like in the case of Yusuf that day, tempers can flare.

Reciprocity
Just as is true of new missionaries on the field, refugees need help doing all the things that “natives” can take for granted: learning English, finding jobs, making doctor appointments, even separating important notices from the junk mail. (I can’t count the times a refugee has brought me a stack of weekend advertisements, and asked, “Did I really win a new car?”)

Despite their many needs, refugees have much to offer as well. The furnace of suffering has produced in many a deep resolve and an enviable work ethic. They have faced death and hardship and rarely sweat the small stuff. They are resourceful and relational; they could teach American professionals a thing or two about “networking.” They come from ethnic groups and cultures that do not get a lot of press, so they have stories and cultural traditions that are as of yet undiscovered.

When I ask my Burmese friend Aung about the commute to his new job, he smiles in his characteristic nuthin’s-gonna-get-me-down manner and says “Oh, you know the bus system here no so good. It take me ’bout two hour.” He knows he won’t work there forever, and he says he can read a book or study English on the way. Because of his good performance and great attitude, he has openedthe door for several other refugees to be considered for employment there. Whether it is by translating for an English-as-a-second-language registration desk or running the PowerPoint slides at his church, Aung is eager to serve others. His kindness is not for any gain; he simply moves to the rhythms of reciprocity and gratitude. Others helped him leave war-torn Burma, so he will help others adjust to life here.

Friends of Muslims
In this day, it is no small thing to be a trusted Christian friend of a Muslim neighbor. Under the surface, many of our Muslim refugee neighbors have a deep-rooted suspicion that they will not be fully accepted into American culture because they perceive this as a “Christian nation.” They know that many Americans are fearful of the Muslim world; they watch the same news shows that we do. They also know that ever since 9/11, their family members have been profiled, if not by the government, then by the people who look sideways at them in the grocery line. So when an American Christian has a meal with a Muslim, the Muslim is likely to think one of three things: (a) this person is an informant for the FBI, trying to get close to me in order to assess me as a threat; (b) this person is a missionary who gets paid to seduce me into forsaking my religion; or (c) this person genuinely cares for me, contrary to all my expectations of the opposite.

Through a consistent ethic of hospitality, and with the unpredictable grace of the Holy Spirit, I see misperceptions and doubts ebb away and trust seeping in. As a result of this genuine love between neighbors, gospel encounters emerge like truffles after a forest rain.

And it is for this reason that we have chosen to share our lives with our neighbors. So maybe when Yusuf and I have a conversation on the sidewalk, the Lord will use my life to help Yusuf understand the gospel differently than he might have understood it before. And when his wife is filled with fear, and I pray with her and Yusuf in the name of “Isa al Masih,” Jesus the Messiah (in Arabic), whom they already revere, maybe they will begin to know Jesus even more deeply – as the One who casts out fear with perfect love.

The message
When we first arrived in Bridgeport, we knew that living among “the poor” would present some challenges to us in finding “healthy boundaries.” Where does legitimate need for help end and unhealthy dependency and entitlement begin? How can I determine if a request is out of dire need or merely convenience? When does bonding with my neighbor become entanglement in his issues? Just how incarnational is too incarnational? There seems to be no easy answer for these questions.

But, in the midst of the mess of unanswered questions, I get to be the one to tell my friend from Bhutan, “Hari, if your family is cold, you can use that switch on the wall to make heat come out of these vents.” In our daily acts of simple love, sharing our lives with our neighbors, we find that Jesus has a way of showing up. And His message to me is this: “My grace is sufficient. My grace is sufficient.”

* The writer’s and city’s names and the names of the writer's friends have been changed, in honor and sensitivity to the relationships the Davidsons have with their Muslim neighbors.