Who is your Neighbor?

 

Chapter 16

 

Soldier of the Cross – Who is your Neighbor?

 

 

After 23 years of living in the Houston area, Jan and I were drawn to the hill country of Texas.  As we looked for a place to live it seemed that God had opened a door for us at a new area called Mountain Springs Ranch.  Looking back it was so cool how God sent the right people at just the right time to direct our path, not only to the property but also to the builder that was to build our new home.  I would be lying if I said it all went smoothly, it was a long time before we moved into that house.  First Jan and I cleared the cedar off the land, and did it have cedar.  It also did not have level ground, it was the hill country and that meant as we cut trees, we had to pull them up or down and it seemed up more often than down.  We had to learn how to keep from falling and I was a very slow learner.  

 

In this slow process of clearing, we often got to meet the few neighbors that had built or were getting ready to build.  We went to building fairs and at one of those we met two men whom we believed God had sent to us for the building of our new home.  Both men turned out to be men of faith in Jesus Christ, and both were very different in how they built a home.  John Moon was more the hands-on type and I was drawn to him Kyle Lindsey seemed to be more organized and Jan was very comfortable with him.  After many visits and prayers, we choose Kyle.  To this day we believe both men would have built us a great house, and yet God opened two doors.  We got to meet more neighbors or people who would someday be our neighbors, as we went through the long 9 months of building the house.  It was during those nine months that the Lord began to put into our hearts a love and a mission to love our neighbors.

 

I believe confession is not only good it is required by our Lord, so I must share that this was new for us, new directions, but an old commandment to love your neighbors.  It seemed I was always too busy to even get to know more than the few neighbors that live close to us so this was new ground, it was a new mission.  If only I had understood, if only I had not been so busy I might have been still, and the Spirit would have shown me what He had shown George MacDonald in the 1800’s.  It is titled, “My Neighbor”, “A man must not choose his neighbor: he must take the neighbor that God sends him …. The neighbor is just the man who is next to you at the moment, the man with whom any business has brought you into contact.”  If you have never read George MacDonald’s writing let me suggest, (C. S. Lewis – George MacDonald and Anthology 365 readings).  MacDonald shares on page 26  “The love of our neighbors is the only door out of the dungeon of self, …”  It seems like it always comes down to “But How” How can I love the person who hates me, the one who if given the opportunity would do me harm or even kill me?  My dad was a man of faith, and he told us often that if we could see a person as God saw them, then we could see that they were redeemable.  George MacDonald said in a title; “What Cannot Be Loved”, “But how can we love a man or woman who . . . is mean, unlovely, carping, uncertain, self-righteous, self-seeking, and self-admiring? - who can ever sneer, the most inhuman of human faults, far worse in its essence than mere murder?  These things cannot be loved.  The best man hates them most; the worst man cannot love them.  But are these the man? . . . Lies there not within the man or women a divine element of brotherhood, or sisterhood, a something lovely and loveable slowly fading, it may be – dying away under the fierce heat of vile passions, or the yet more fearful cold of sepulchral selfishness, but there? . . . It is the very presence of this fading humanity that makes it possible for us to hate.  If it were an animal only, and not a man or a woman, that did us hurt, we should not hate: we should only kill.”

 

So my dear soldier of the Cross-, what has the Commander instructed us in the manufacturer's handbook?  Has he not said in Mark 12:29-31 “The most important is, Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no other commandment greater than these.”  My dear fellow soldier, did you understand, that these are the big ones, all the others come after these.  So if you are too busy or just not interested in loving your God and Loving your neighbor, you're not pleasing, you are not pleasing your Commander in Chief.   So you may be the big dog at your church, you may be the preacher, the big giver of money, you may hold the title of chairman of the women's circle or chairman of deacons, but you are not pleasing to God.  I often have made the mistake of looking at the Commander's views in the book of James.  In James 2:8 -10 “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well.  But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.  For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.”   Show partiality; what about just do not care?  What about I’m too busy and it's just too big a job, let someone else love those people.  

 

I must revisit my confession; I’ve dropped the ball, on these two commands.  I did not show the love of Jesus Christ to those who worked beside me, and I did not show love for those who thought differently from me, I have blown it and I am guilty and accountable for all.  So how about you, how are you doing?  Jesus said the proof of being a soldier on the cross is if you love one another.  He also said in John 15:12 “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”  You may be like me just beginning to obey the Father's command to love Him and love others.  My prayer is that my hero George MacDonald’s words will keep ringing in our ears and our hearts; “A man must not choose his neighbor: he must take the neighbor that God sends him. The neighbor is just the man who is next to you at the moment, the man with whom any business has brought you into contact.”

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice