Love Thy Neighbor
Love my neighbor? Why?
“Who is my neighbor?” An expert in the Jewish scriptures asked Jesus one day. It’s a question we might ponder today.
Is it the guy behind my back fence whose dog barks 24/7?
Is it the coworker who always manages to take credit for my ideas?
Or heaven forbid, the lady down the street who doesn’t vote the way I do, but should?
If we’re to love our neighbor, how exactly are we supposed to do that?
Well according to the Hallmark Channel it’s easy. You just have to run into a person, not get along at first, then fall in love just before you save the small town you grew up in.
But real love isn’t like that.
I’m certainly no expert, in fact full disclosure we have some of the greatest neighbors in the world, but I don’t think that’s what Jesus was talking about. In fact, in His answer to this guy He tells the story of the Good Samaritan, a hated second-class citizen who takes the time and expense to care for someone who probably wouldn’t give him a second glance in other circumstances.
So how do we begin to start loving the people around us who we don’t even necessarily like? Here are a couple of ideas.
Pray. Pray for the person, it’s really hard to be upset with someone for very long if you’re praying for them.
And pray for yourself. You might even say “Lord, you know how I feel about that lady whose voting all wrong. Help me just begin to love her.”
Get curious. Try to see things from their perspective. Why do they behave that way? You don’t have to go all Freud on this but maybe there are some reasons they need to take credit for your work, or they ignore you when you say hi. If you were in their shoes, how would you like to be treated?
Choose to love them. Choosing to love them might be something as simple as smiling at them, asking them how things are going, or helping them take their trash out. Or maybe by not talking about them to others or ruminating about all the things you don’t like about them. That might be a little harder.
Jesus says it’s easy to love the people who love you. So why does He command us to love the ones who not only don’t love us back but seem to want to make our lives miserable?
It’s simple.
He wants us to come to Him. He knows we can’t love those people on our own. We need His Holy Spirit to even want to love them. He knows we need to come to Him. After all, that’s His number one priority- a relationship with us. And sometimes He’ll use the challenges in our lives to draw us closer to Himself.
The kid with the five loaves and two fish knew he couldn’t feed 5000 people with his meager lunch. “Let’s see, if everyone gets three crumbs and a scale, we might just be able to make it.” No, he brought what he had to Jesus.
Maybe all you have right now is the desire to do what Jesus says, even though your feelings toward that other person are far from loving. Let God know. He loves when we come to Him in our weakness.
This is not to say we roll over and take unkind or abusive behavior. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is to confront hurtful behavior. And in some cases, to remove yourself from the situation.
Ask God to give you the right response. Who knows? Maybe you and your difficult person will end up saving the small town you grew up in.