Randy was the ladies’ man of my fraternity. There wasn’t any girl, any time, anywhere that Randy couldn’t start a conversation with. Ever the eager student —I was in college after all—I asked Randy to tell me the secret of meeting girls. You know what his answer was? “Say, ‘Hi.””
What? “Hi” is the great pick up line? Yep, he assured me, it’s as easy as saying “Hi.” I thought there was some magic phrase such as, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” But Randy assured me there was no magic formula. Just say, “Hi.”
One of the chief symptoms of our broken world is how lonely people are. This loneliness affects every segment of our population—senior adults, young adults, middle-aged men and women, students. No one is immune. For all of the communication tools we have, most people are lonely.
That’s why the church has to recover the Biblical image of family. In the early church, it wasn’t unusual for a new Christian to lose their family when converting to Christ. That’s why it was so important that the believing community see itself as brothers and sisters to the new believer. Sometimes, the church was the only family the believer had.
And you know, not that much has changed. The break down of families in our culture means we have children who need fathers and mothers. We have students who need older brothers and sisters. There are senior adults who need children and grandchildren to spoil. All of us need brothers and sisters. So our Heavenly Father makes sure we have plenty of them.
And we know who they are. They sit close to us in church. They walk past us in the halls. We stand in line together for coffee. But how can we get to know them? Follow Randy’s advice; just say, “Hi.” Yeah, it really is that easy.
Invite them to coffee. Ask about their families, work, school, tattoo, nose ring, hat, laptop, phone, favorite team, movie, software, store, vacation spot, restaurant, music, or artist. There’s no end to the topics you can talk about.
And it all starts with “Hi.” I know, people come in all shapes and sizes, but underneath, people are still people. For all of our differences, we all have the same basic needs. We need to be loved, to be missed when we are not there. We need someone to know our names and our story. We need someone to say, “Hi.”
