Jesus also told this parable within the broader question of eternal life and the law; Jesus replies that the greatest commandments are to love God and to love others.
So in order to truly be a good neighbor, to love others deeply, you have to love God. Jesus made this possible for both Jews and Gentiles with his life, death, and resurrection. Now that we have analyzed who our neighbor is, through the examples given in the Old and New Testaments, we can focus on what it means to be a good neighbor. To bring the Lord glory, we must act upon the teachings He has given us. It can be intimidating to know where to start.
How do we go from looking only to our own needs and preferences to helping those around us? The truth is that we cannot do it on our own, nor does focusing on others obsessively allow us to love them better.
To be a good neighbor, we must first love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind. This is the greatest commandment.
God placed this as the first commandment, and not the second for a reason. In Matthew it says,. To love others well we have to be filled with the love of God first. Our hearts, souls, and minds must be transformed and focused on the Lord before we can ever love our neighbors selflessly and intentionally.
It delights the Lord when we strive to love our neighbors, His children. Practically speaking, there are certain ways we can be good neighbors. The first is to spend time in the Word of God each day. To truly have eyes that see the needs of those around us, we must first be filled by time spent solely with the Lord. We are not helpful to anyone if we are not pouring out of a soul filled by the Holy Spirit.
The second way is to pray intentionally that we would see the needs of those around us. This prayer pleases the Lord because it shows a heart that is operating from the love He has given us. God will honor this prayer when we pray with a pure heart to open our eyes and minds to those around us that need help. Thirdly, share that you are praying to be a good neighbor with those around you.
It is most beneficial to share with people who will keep you accountable and pray alongside you. Now simply look around and see the opportunities the Lord places before you to love others well. He will be faithful to let us love one another because He has commanded us to do so.
Lord, thank you for the opportunity to love one another. Allowing us to love our neighbors for a season or for a lifetime is a gift that we do not deserve. We can only love because you have first loved us. We ask you to open our eyes to the needs of those around us and grant us courage to serve in ways that seem hard. Thank you for teaching us through the parable of the good Samaritan that you have called us to love all people and not just those that look, act, and think like we do.
Mold our hearts to do your will. We love you so much. We all have neighbors; they are a certainty in life and it is a command from the Lord to love these neighbors well. May it be our hearts cry to the Lord that we love our neighbors, just as He has loved us.
Allison Auld is a young professional living in SC. She is a clinical counselor with a passion to help others grow and heal. She enjoys spending time with her friends, family, and good coffee. After a long day at work, you relish the opportunity to return home, curl up in your easy chair with a new novel or movie and enter into the world of the story that has been created for you. The world of a particular story often looks different to different people.
This is due to the fact that your experience of the world of the story is shaped, in part, by your own experience. If you are a Native American reading a novel about the Little Big Horn, you will experience the character of Custer differently than a person whose ancestors settled in the West.
Both experience Walker's created world differently than a white man or woman. The same process is at play when we read the revealed word of God in Sacred Scripture. We need to acknowledge the world in front of the text and appreciate the vitality it provides our reading of Scripture, but it cannot be our only guide for interpretation. The meaning of Scripture is partially revealed to us through our own experience, but this revelation is incomplete.
To be satisfied with this level of understanding would be to reduce Scripture to our own purposes. The story of the Good Samaritan may be familiar, but in order to understand the full impact of this parable, we must first understand the history of Jewish-Samaritan relations. In this parable as well as in other Gospel stories such as the story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman, we can observe the tense relationship that existed between Jews and Samaritans. This tension may go back as far as B.
By the time of Jesus, Samaritans and Jews no longer considered themselves to be neighbors, let alone related through a common ancestry. Given this tense relationship between Jews and Samaritans at the time of Jesus, the Parable of the Good Samaritan would have been quite shocking to its first listeners.
Whatever social categories we may have that define "neighbor" are thwarted by the needs of all the people we encounter. In this way, anyone in need is our neighbor. You make yourself someone's neighbor. The Samaritan in the story forces all those listening to recognize his ability to enact transformative love towards his Jewish neighbor. The Samaritan is a human with dignity and therefore, is not to be written off.
However, it is essential that we bring the insight we have gleaned from the historical context to bear on the world in front of the text, or our twenty-first century context.
If the people moving into our community do not belong to our category of neighbor, we say that the community is "changing. Specifically, we must consider whether there are groups of people whose dignity and ability we fail to recognize. Consideration of these contexts is not enough, though. It is essential not only to acknowledge the bearings of the historical and modern contexts on Scripture, but we must also ask how the weaving of these two worlds calls us to action.
It is not enough to discern and reflect on this revelation, however. This content is excerpted from the Journey to Justice program, a day-long retreat developed by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. JustFaith Ministries uses this retreat to help their program participants encounter persons living in poverty, understand the root causes of poverty, and reflect on how the Gospel challenges us to respond.
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