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Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Matthew 22:37-39 (NIV)

You are called to love your neighbor. Jesus said it was equal to the greatest commandment.

Who is your neighbor? What is your responsibility to your neighbor?

Listen

Christ is just like the human body—a body is a unit and has many parts; and all the parts of the body are one body, even though there are many. We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greek, or slave or free, and we all were given one Spirit to drink.

1 Corinthians 12:12-13

Think

The human body is an intricate, detailed organism. With 60,000 miles of blood vessels, nerve impulses that travel 250 mph, seven octillion atoms, and it containing .2 mg of gold, the human body is staggeringly beautiful and complex.

Equally complex and beautiful is the body of Christ. Its beauty doesn’t come in its perfection, but in its imperfection. The fact that Jesus loves each of us broken and distorted human beings, and that he dreams us to be our best selves, makes Christianity remarkable. This dream that Jesus has for us can only be realized inside of relationship within his body. And it’s inside of these relationships that Jesus’s body grows to become everything that Jesus was when he walked the earth — the hope of the world.

Jeremy Sims

Pray

Jesus, your body is the hope of the world. Show me how to see its beauty and celebrate it as it strives for its best. Give me a deep sense of my responsibility to pray and nurture your body. Amen.

Go

Go and love.

Go and value the other image bearers of God around you.

Believe the best in your neighbor.