The Greatest Commandment

How are we to love a world that is so desperately lost and doesn’t want help? How are we to love our neighbors who we don’t even know? How do we show love to the clerk at the check-out line at Walmart?
Sometimes, I believe being a missionary in Africa is the easy route. It is easy to know how to love people there. It is easy to show love to the destitute and despondent. It is easy simply because if you see a person living on the street, you give them shelter and food. If some kids are neglected, you hug them and play with them. If a kid has worms, you give them a tablet of albendazole and pray for them. These are all fairly straightforward. It may not be easy to do, but it is easy to know how to love the people in Africa. It is easy because the people are desperate for signs of love.
Here in America, we are not so in need of a roof over our heads or a meal. We never get worms, so we don’t need to be de-wormed. Here in suburbia, the kids are usually not terribly neglected, and to go and hug and play with random kids on a playground might make you the target of some suspicion. So, that brings us again to the question, how so we love the people who need love but don’t know they need it?
I found a verse in the Bible to be helpful, when Jesus is talking about loving your neighbor. Jesus is quoting the Old Testament law here. He says to love your neighbor as yourself, but how does that happen? How do we do that? Leviticus 19:18 defines what loving your neighbor might mean. “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” God has told us a specific way to love our neighbor here. We are to love them like ourselves, we are to treat everyone how we treat ourselves.
If you like going first in a line, if you like to have a door held open for you, if you would like someone to help you load your groceries in the cart, then maybe we should start by doing those simple things for the people around us. Doing these things aren’t simply about being a nice person or being civil, its about loving our neighbor, just as we would want to be loved.
A great example of doing this was a bit extreme, but when I was nannying, I had little David with me at Target. He has cerebral palsy and didn’t talk much and was a bit difficult to handle at times. I had just put him in the car and gotten in, when a lady came over and motioned me to roll down the window. She reached out her hand and slipped me a $50 bill. I don’t know if she was a Christian or not, but since this was in the Bible Belt, she most likely was. In my mind, she saw me, a young-looking, single mother who needed help, and she helped. She showed love. The fact that I was not a struggling single mother is beside the point! I put the money aside to save for going on a mission trip, which turned out to be Mozambique.
I am by no means saying that we should give money to every person who may need it on the street, but we need to be sensitive to Holy Spirit and be asking Him to open our eyes so we can see how to love people better. We must be constantly asking Him to show us the specific things we can do to show love those around us. It may be as simple as giving our sister a hug when she hurt herself, or it may be as complicated as arranging a construction team to build a house for a homeless widow. Wherever we are, whatever our occupation, this command stands true and remains the same. We are to love those around us with God’s love, just as we love ourselves.