The Bible says that the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor because for the most part it fulfills all the other commandments.
So who is our/yours/my neighbor? What does it mean to love them?
I've had a chance to really take in what it means to love your neighbor, how different my neighbors have become and how loving them is more complex than I ever would have imagined.
It stretches beyond the matter-of-fact mail box neighbors, it streches across all state, country and continent boundries, it soars over rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans. It goes deep within every corner and every forgotten about piece of earth.
The Bible clearly states what love is. It is kind, patient, not rude, not for self gain, does not envy, it is always there, is not jealous, helps whenever there is a time of need, not easily angered. LOVE NEVER FAILS.
In Kansas my neighbors were: Shawnee Heights students and faculty, Brookwood Covenant Church members, Supersonic Music employees and it's guitar/drum crazed customers, the international students my parents opened our home to, friends who loved me and friends who hurt me, those in my quaint Shawnee County neighborhood. --These are comfort neighbors.
In Chicago it is all the Albany Park/North Park neighborhood residents, North Park University students and faculty, coworkers in the library, students in the Chicago Public School System, the homeless, Edgewater Presbyterian Church, all the girls I have lived in close quarters with, all ethnicity's that color the city. --This was a new challenge for me. Learning what it meant to show the homeless love and acceptance, understanding the children in the classroom and how important it was to love them at school because it may be the only place they get it, loving the 40 strangers I share a bathroom with because that is what living in a community is about, showing love to the foreign born residents of Chicago in order to show respect to their culture and give them comfort in this new country.
In India. Love has never been so heavy or loud in my heart. Love has been easy to give in some places but sometimes I've had small challenges.
In India my neighbors are the HCC members and friends, children in slums, mothers in the slums, the drunks in the slums, the commercial sex workers, the ex-commercial sex workers, the men who are pursuing sex in the commercial sex worker area, begging lepers, begging children in the road, eunuchs, all of the watchful eyes from strangers wherever I go.
All these neighbors require a different way of receiving love. The love I show the child in the slum is different than the love I give to the commercial sex worker. It is still love. It is not rude, it is kind, it is there when the person is in need and it does not fail.
Jesus did not stay with only the his comfort neighbors, like the ones I only surrounded myself with in Kansas. (There are many what I'm calling "non comfort neighbors" in Kansas, I just didn't seek them at the time. I am not saying that Jesus work cannot be done in these places, it most certainly can.) To love as Jesus did we have to walk down the red light district and love all the people in it. To love as Jesus did we have to walk into the slum, passed all the drunk men (loving them even if they are drunk at ten in the morning leaving their wife and children to work harder than they have worked a day in their life just to provide food and feed their husband's addiction), to get to the upper room where anywhere between 15-30 children may come to receive the simplest of education and give them love no matter which side of the bed you woke up on.
What's true love if you aren't challenged to love those neighbors the commandments were talking about?
Do something that makes love a challenge, that makes you so uncomfortable that you just want to turn around instead of going forward. Always remembering that Jesus was once in your shoes.
Hannah Joy.
So who is our/yours/my neighbor? What does it mean to love them?
I've had a chance to really take in what it means to love your neighbor, how different my neighbors have become and how loving them is more complex than I ever would have imagined.
It stretches beyond the matter-of-fact mail box neighbors, it streches across all state, country and continent boundries, it soars over rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans. It goes deep within every corner and every forgotten about piece of earth.
The Bible clearly states what love is. It is kind, patient, not rude, not for self gain, does not envy, it is always there, is not jealous, helps whenever there is a time of need, not easily angered. LOVE NEVER FAILS.
In Kansas my neighbors were: Shawnee Heights students and faculty, Brookwood Covenant Church members, Supersonic Music employees and it's guitar/drum crazed customers, the international students my parents opened our home to, friends who loved me and friends who hurt me, those in my quaint Shawnee County neighborhood. --These are comfort neighbors.
In Chicago it is all the Albany Park/North Park neighborhood residents, North Park University students and faculty, coworkers in the library, students in the Chicago Public School System, the homeless, Edgewater Presbyterian Church, all the girls I have lived in close quarters with, all ethnicity's that color the city. --This was a new challenge for me. Learning what it meant to show the homeless love and acceptance, understanding the children in the classroom and how important it was to love them at school because it may be the only place they get it, loving the 40 strangers I share a bathroom with because that is what living in a community is about, showing love to the foreign born residents of Chicago in order to show respect to their culture and give them comfort in this new country.
In India. Love has never been so heavy or loud in my heart. Love has been easy to give in some places but sometimes I've had small challenges.
In India my neighbors are the HCC members and friends, children in slums, mothers in the slums, the drunks in the slums, the commercial sex workers, the ex-commercial sex workers, the men who are pursuing sex in the commercial sex worker area, begging lepers, begging children in the road, eunuchs, all of the watchful eyes from strangers wherever I go.
All these neighbors require a different way of receiving love. The love I show the child in the slum is different than the love I give to the commercial sex worker. It is still love. It is not rude, it is kind, it is there when the person is in need and it does not fail.
Jesus did not stay with only the his comfort neighbors, like the ones I only surrounded myself with in Kansas. (There are many what I'm calling "non comfort neighbors" in Kansas, I just didn't seek them at the time. I am not saying that Jesus work cannot be done in these places, it most certainly can.) To love as Jesus did we have to walk down the red light district and love all the people in it. To love as Jesus did we have to walk into the slum, passed all the drunk men (loving them even if they are drunk at ten in the morning leaving their wife and children to work harder than they have worked a day in their life just to provide food and feed their husband's addiction), to get to the upper room where anywhere between 15-30 children may come to receive the simplest of education and give them love no matter which side of the bed you woke up on.
What's true love if you aren't challenged to love those neighbors the commandments were talking about?
Do something that makes love a challenge, that makes you so uncomfortable that you just want to turn around instead of going forward. Always remembering that Jesus was once in your shoes.
Hannah Joy.
