What's been your worst, or strangest, neighborly experience? Mine goes a little something like this...
There is a rental house about 50 feet from our house on the same side of the road. It's junky and very cheap to rent. A lot of interesting travelers pass through there. One time a mom and her kids lived there. The mom, whenever we saw here, seemed kind of out it. Once her toddler ran into our yard stark naked covered in flour. The mom just walked into our yard and, without saying anything, picked him up and just walked back. It's not that I hated her, but I felt indifferent toward her. I didn't care that she was poor and broken. I just cared about her staying out of our yard.
When Jesus was questioned about the greatest commandment, He replied that it is first and foremost to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." He followed that up with, "And a second [greatest commandment] is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Read more here: Matthew 22
It scares me to think that I'm preventing myself from investing in others because I'm clinging on to the things this side of Heaven, the things that give me security and keep my days neat and clean; I'm building those walls. That's not the life Jesus lived. He invested His life into those people...into us. I pray today that God softens my heart. What walls of ours are blocking out the neighbors?
