neighbor on Cross-Cultural Experience

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Missing the point? In the days when the tourist business was good in Israel, some entrepreneurial chap set up a tent between Jerusalem ...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Missing the point? In the days when the tourist business was good in Israel, some entrepreneurial chap set up a tent between Jerusalem ...

The Latin term for confrontation means “to turn your face toward, to look at frontally.” It merely indicates that you are turning toward the relationship and the person. You are face-to-face, so to sp...

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....

(Scripture quotations below are from ESV unless noted otherwise.) Author and Audience Acknowledging the scholarly debate over whether the letter comes directly from the apostle or from the traditio...

(Scripture quotations below are from ESV unless noted otherwise.) Liturgical Context On this Third Sunday of Easter, the Revised Common Lectionary texts harmonize with the epistle’s praise of Jesus...

Merciful Jesus Give us courage to deny privilege to lay down favor and safety in order to take up the cross of opportunity and justice Too often we fail to do this Merciful Jesus Give us courage to d...

The Christian life is not a life dripping with personal satisfaction or one of basking in feeling “positive.” It isn’t a life baptized in stimulation or excitement. It definitely isn’t a life of conse...

In a number of civilizations, hospitality was viewed as a pillar on which all morality rested; it encompassed “the good.” For the people of ancient Israel, understanding themselves as strangers and so...

Even Christians living through a hostile season are called to stand with their neighbors and become zealous for the common good.

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...

Social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.

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 look for what's best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does, so in appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

When conflict and division are driving both politics and media (including social media), the contrast between the way of the world and the way of Jesus stands out more than ever. How can pastors, task...

Our mission is the mission of Jesus Christ.  He lived as an ordinary human being. We will care for the common life of humanity. He served men and women. We are committed to working for human wel...

What I’ve come to realize is if I really want to “meet Jesus,” then I have to get a lot closer to the people He created. All of them, not just some of them.

Reflection We all are aware of cultures that have a hierarchy—a pecking order. The elite and the hoi polloi. The acceptable and the unacceptable. In such cultures, the hierarchy determines the role. ...

[I]f we have compassion without capacity, we have human frustration. If we have capacity without compassion, we have human alienation. If we have compassion and capacity, we have human transformation....

If you never left your home and avoided all interaction with other people, you couldn’t be characterized as a loving person. Instead, you might even be unloving because of your lack of concern for oth...

Preaching Commentary A Christmastide Community A recent podcast reminded me that there is no such thing as a “neutral” marking of our time—our minutes and our hours, our days and our weeks, our mon...

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...

Q: "Are you a Christian?" A: "Ask my neighbor."

Examine your heart often to see if it is such toward your neighbor as you would like his to be toward you were you in his place. This is the touchstone of true reason.

Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man.

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...

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 Christian terms, evangelization and humanization are not alternatives. Nor are the 'vertical dimension' of faith and the 'horizontal dimension' of love for one's neighbor and po...

He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.