Won't You Be My Neighbor?

And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live." But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"-Luke 10:27-29

The word here for neighbor in Greek is "Plesion." I'm told it is derived from the Greek word for "near." The following verses in Luke are a parable told by Jesus to explain to the dude who his neighbor is. *Spoiler alert!* It's whoever he's near. Not just a fellow Jew, but everyone he runs across.

Often I've taken this verse to the more extreme end. The lawyer in the above verses was trying to bend "love your neighbor" to his own ends. It seems he felt confident about how he treated his fellow Jews, or those that lived around him. However, Jesus was upping the ante. It's easy for me to take this point and run with it. Sure...love everybody. Got it. But brought down to it's simplest form, it still says "neighbor."

My wife and I bought a house almost two years ago. We've only talked to a few of our neighbors, and those were ones we already knew. We don't spend any time with them. The others I don't know I already have a bias against. In fact, on the Fourth, one house kept me up way too late shooting fireworks.

I can't get past what Jesus commands though. I must love my neighbor. This is where I am, these are the people that are near me. Perhaps we will never grow really close. Perhaps we will. I need to be making the effort though. This is a HUGE undertaking for me. I'm not sure where to start, but I am aware of the issue that needs to be changed, and this gives me something to pray about and strive towards.