neighbor on Hospitality

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...

Gracious God, in Christ Jesus, you teach us to love our neighbors but instead we build dividing walls of hostility. You show us how to love one another as sisters and brothers but instead we hide from...

Each of us, Lord, has failed to fully observe your beauty. We fall in love with our own image and are left disappointed and alone. Please be faithful to us, Jesus, even when we turn from You. We...

Father-God, our burden bearer; Jesus, God the Son and lover of our souls; Spirit of God–giver of life and power: Thank You! Thank You for those we love and those who love us. Thank You for mothers and...

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

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 ...

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...

As our heavenly Father has in Christ freely come to our aid, we also ought freely to help our neighbor . . . and each one should become . . . a Christ to the other.

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...

He who gives of his goods to help the poor, to send children to school, to educate them in God’s Word and other arts ... he is giving to the baby Jesus.

Hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ on the night before his death: “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord a...

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. ...

To be truly good means more than not robbing people . . . To be truly good means more than being righteously religious . . . To be truly good means being a good neighbor. . . . And to be a good neighb...

Our God, we have been slow to stand and slow to act. We have been unmoved in the face of wrongs. Rather than welcoming others, we have put up walls. We have served this god of self-preservation. But y...

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...

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 ...

God’s ideal economy banks on the idea that you shall know your neighbor who is suffering and that you shall be compelled to do something about it.

[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....

Generous Lord Jesus We confess that we do not receive others with compassion. We object to being interrupted And respond with anger or frustration. We confess that we do not share generously Not trus...

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...

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

Introduction Only John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus washed his disciple’s feet during his last meal with them. The other texts for this day remember the Passover and the context it sets for Jesus’s w...

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

To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.

Father God, you see us; you have compassion; and you care for your greatest creation – people. You have also called us to notice, to listen, and to love others. Yet in our selfishness, we have ignored...

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.

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.

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...

(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...