There is no telling how many times, "love your neighbor as yourself," has been at the forefront of my thinking and no telling how long I have misinterpreted "who my neighbor is. I have often responded to the “who is my neighbor” question by answering; everybody and anybody on earth. Closer – the folks next door. Professionally and pastorally, those who are sick, dying, and all who are associated in grief.
This morning, I realize how faulty my thinking has been! As a friend of mine once said to me, Bill, you are in the right church, but the wrong pew. I was reading the story of the good Samaritan and heard what Jesus said was the answer to the question of, Who is my neighbor? In the story He is telling (see Luke 10:29-37) he ends by asking, Which do you think, proved himself a neighbor to the man who fell into the bandits' hands?" The neighbor, Jesus makes clear, is not the poor many laying on the side of the road, stripped, beaten, and half dead, but the Samaritan who crossed the road, "bandaged his wounds, poring oil and wine on them, . . .lifted him onto his own mount and took him to an inn and looked after him." My neighbor is the one who crosses the road for me!
Sharing the the most recent pondering of a "coloring outside the lines," 75 year old, professing Christian, husband, father, grandfather, and friend.
