I’ve noticed how easy it is for Christians — myself included — to talk about others in the third person: “the homeless,” “the liberals,” “the disillusioned youth.” It’s subtle, but it creates distance.

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One evening in prayer, God began to replace those vague categories in my mind with real faces and names. Ben, Mud, Dino, Hank, and Patti. Tim, Sandra, and Edward. Frank, Teresa, and Naomi. They are no longer issues to fix or problems to solve, but people created in God’s image — each one known and deeply loved.

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That realization broke me. I wept for speaking about people I loved as though they were far away, and I asked God to help me see them as He does.That’s when I realized how easily faith drifts into theory when it isn’t lived out in proximity. We can’t learn love from a distance; it grows when we sit across a table, share a story, or walk the messy roads of real life together.

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Through Proxima, I’m learning — and helping others learn — to move from theory to relationship, from third person to first name. Love isn’t a strategy but an embrace. It’s the quiet, daily act of seeing others as Jesus does and letting His presence become known through real stories and shared life.