Neighbor

Neighbor

Love your neighbor as yourself.

“I SENT CHRISTY MONEY,” Sarah said, grabbing her car keys as she turned toward the front door.

“Oh? Isn’t she the neighbor who said those awful things about you to her friend who you work with?” Snagging my purse, I followed her to the car.

“The very one. She is on round two of a dozen chemo treatments.” Sarah paused, looking at me as she started the car. “The Holy Spirit told me to give her $300 out of my emergency stash, so I did. I put a little care package together, tucked the money into the card, and left it on her doorstep.”

“How do you feel about that?” I asked after a long pause, knowing the whole story, the deep hurt, and the complicated feelings Sarah had about Christy.

“I’m conflicted. I want to support her family, but I also didn’t want to do it because I was afraid of her response. What if she misunderstands the intent behind my care package and says something nasty about me to her friend and that person passes it on to my other coworkers? I don’t want to go through that again.” Sarah sighed, throwing her arm over the back of the passenger seat as we backed down her driveway, “But I just keep giving Christy to God. If he asked me to do it, I have to trust that he’ll work it out.”

“Oh, friend. You are loving your neighbor. God will honor that.”

When Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, a Pharisee asked Jesus to define the label “neighbor.” Jesus responded with the story of the Good Samaritan, a story so ubiquitously famous that many people don’t realize it originated in Scripture. Despite its familiarity, we’ve lost a key fact through culture and time: the Samaritan was the despised, hated enemy of the man lying unconscious and injured. In other words, the Samaritan was the villain, not the hero, of the story. It was the enemy who stopped to help. And when Jesus told us to love our neighbor, he intentionally includes our enemy in that command. We are to love our enemies (and everyone else) as ourselves.

Lord, help us be women who honor your command to love our neighbors. Amen.

-Julie

One Good Step: Ask God for an outreach assignment, and then, like Sarah, be responsive to the assignment, even if you are left trusting the results to God.