Did Jesus Really Tell Us to Be Good Neighbors?

Love those people next door?

We know this isn’t the way it is supposed to be. This isn’t what Jesus envisioned for us and for our world. We know we can do more. And we know that we can’t just sit around waiting for someone else to do it. But it’s hard to know where to start. Right? Start by looking around your own neighborhood. What problems do you see? The yard across the street is full of knee-high weeds. You know the husband just got laid off from work. Should you call code enforcement? Maybe the local government will be the one to help. Next door there are teenagers, and the smell of pot seeps out the windows on a nightly basis. You wonder if you should call the police. That will take care of the problem. Won’t it?

Love those people next door?

There’s a family a couple of doors down with several children. It’s clear that none of them speak English very well and you wonder if the kids are even in school. Should you contact someone in the school district? Surely they are equipped to handle this sort of problem. Aren’t they? These problems aren’t hypothetical; they likely exist just outside your front door. We can always hope that somebody else will handle them. But what if we could be part of the solution? And what if the solution is more attainable than we think? What if it all starts with getting to know the invisible neighbors that surround us? What good things might happen if you truly got to know the people in your neighborhood and they got to know you?

Love those people next door?

Love your neighbor as yourself. Could it be that simple? The solutions to the problems in our neighborhoods aren’t ultimately found in the government, police, or schools or in getting more people to go to church. The solutions lie with us. It’s within our power to become good neighbors, to care for the people around us and to be cared for by the people around us. There really is a different way to live, and we are ﬁnding that it is actually the best way to live. Jesus said the most important thing we can do is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are discovering that Jesus was actually really smart. You could even say that He was and is a genius. When Jesus was asked to reduce everything important into one command, He gave us a simple and powerful plan that, if acted on, would literally change the world.