thought exercise on Loving your Neighbor

What if the solution to our society’s biggest issues has been right under our noses for the past two thousand years? When Jesus was asked to reduce everything in the Bible into one command he said: Lo...

What is our responsibility to our neighbor? This is a question many have asked, including the Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Meditating on the topic he observed, “To patiently endure wrongs done ...

If you have ever watched the President of the United States deliver the State of the Union Address in recent years, you know that at some point in his speech, he will point to the balcony and introduc...

Christ was led by His love for others into the world, to forget Himself in the needs of others, to sacrifice self once for all upon the altar of sympathy. Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world....

The victory of God in our time over this deathly idolatry is hidden from us, as God’s decisive victory is always hidden from us. We do not know exactly when and where the victory has been wrought. It ...

In 2009 I (Dave) gathered a group of twenty lead pastors in the Denver area so we could think, dream, and pray about how our churches might join forces to serve our community. We invited our local may...

We cannot be closed off to one another and be open to God. That’s not how this works. Do you remember the commercial when the woman says “that’s not how this works, that's not how any of this work...

Not long before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the congregation at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church: If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. An...

Whether we’re protecting the unborn, supporting fair prison sentences, or making sure the elderly are taken care of, politics provides a forum for advocating for our neighbor’s well-being and pursuing...

After attending a conference in New York City, a pastoral colleague, Reid Kapple, was flying home to Kansas City on US Airways flight 745 when the plane suddenly lost cabin pressure. As the plane desc...

In his excellent book on the desert fathers, Where God Happens , former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tells of an encounter between two monastic fathers. The first was Macarius, famous in...

Cruciform love is welcoming the immigrant simply because they bear the image of God, even if the only thing they bring to us is hassle and possible harm. Cruciform love is praying for those who persec...

The Sermon on the Mount contains some of the most difficult ethical injunctions in all of scripture. Many of us do not know how to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Martin Luther K...

Tom and Angela had lived in their neighborhood for about twelve years without really getting to know many people. They lived in a cul-de-sac of eleven houses and had limited communication and interact...

When we think about our health and safety, we tend to think first and foremost about our bodies. We may also consider our mental health. But have you ever considered how your relational health impacts...

Scripture calls us to offer a radical welcome to strangers, but we are not able to give what we do not have. Before we can love our neighbor, we must love and care for ourselves so we can have somethi...

At a worship service I attended a couple of years ago, my attention was drawn to the enthusiastic worship leader. He opened our time with prayer, asking God to meet us and draw us together in the Lord...

In 2017 Rebekah Morris was teaching English and journalism at Cross Keys High School, a public high school in Atlanta. Noticing that her students had really important, insightful things to say about t...

As Christians, we do not need to justify who we are; Jesus took care of that. We are loved and forgiven. When I’m tempted to advertise my accomplishments, qualifications, or résumés when talking with ...

There is a paradigm shift going on in the realm of forestry. For years there had been a consensus among ecologists that all trees were independent operators, each tree an island unto itself, the fores...

Let me tell you the story of a great missionary named Frank C. Laubach (1884–1970). He grew up in the farming community of Benton, PA, and served as a Congregationalist missionary in the Philippines. ...

Greg and some of his friends from church were zealous to pursue the common good of their community, Ventura, California. Instead of coming up with their own ideas of how to do this, they started by li...

As neighbors were texting my turned-off phone about danger at Hank’s house, I was sitting at my desk, praying for Hank. I was praying for Hank’s salvation. And then I noticed it: burly men ducking aro...

Isaiah 58 tells us that the Lord wants us to share our bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into our homes, share our clothing with those who need some and not hide ourselves from the rest o...

Kevin Blue has spent much of his ministry career serving the poor in inner-city Los Angeles. In this excerpt he describes working with a war vet named Clarence: Richard, Tim, Caroline and Ellen move...

Let me tell you the story of a great missionary named Frank C. Laubach (1884–1970). He grew up in the farming community of Benton, PA, and served as a Congregationalist missionary in the Philippines. ...

Leonard Sweet shares an interesting story in the introduction to Neil Cole’s book, Organic Church , about a parish pastor who lived in a Scottish village near Edinburgh called Davidson’s Mains. ...

During that time there was a pastor named Peter Miller, and all through his ministry in a small town in Lancaster County, he had a neighbor who took great pleasure in mocking and ridiculing Miller and...

Once, while on vacation, on our way to church, Terri and I got into a disagreement over something. When I felt I was losing, to make my point, I stopped the car and got out. We were on a country road....

One of the costliest requirements of Christlike love is Jesus’s call to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5: 44). What does this look like for Christians in today’s world...