What I Can Do

What I Can Do

Some greet the morning after an important election dejected and angry. Some awaken to it jubilant and glad. Many are simply relieved that the bruising discord of another political mud-wrestling contest is finally done. Ballots are cast and counted every November. It is not new. We shake ourselves off and begin again.

Assignments may change in the halls of power, constitutional duties may be transferred and seats rearranged, but as followers of Christ, our assignment never changes, no matter who occupies the White House, the statehouse, the judicial bench, or the corner office. I am thankful that ours is a straightforward, unwavering assignment. And I am humbled by how simple and yet impossibly challenging it can be to put into practice.

When asked by experts in the law to state the greatest commandment, Jesus gave them a compound command, one whose two parts are ultimately toothless unless they are permanently joined. “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind,” he said. “[And] love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37, 39). And he meant it.

Love God with every part of your being. And love your neighbor as yourself. No loopholes. No excuses. No insistence that the neighbor look like you, agree with you, or even like you. And in case his hearers were already internally calculating how to limit the size of that expansive universe, the Son of God told a story that first shattered, then expanded their definition of neighbor from “nearest only” to “immediately present and neediest also.” Who is my neighbor? My neighbor is the one near me—in this moment—who is in need.

I have been instructed—by the one who first loved me—exactly whom I should love and how. I know what I can do, and you do too. I can love by seeing, by embracing, and by meeting the needs of those whose paths cross mine, in Jesus’ name—ever grateful for the way he keeps on providing for me.

Grace, mercy and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.

2 John 1:3, NASB