Listen

“And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

Matthew 22:39-40

Think

After Jesus told the religious leaders that the most important commandment was loving God with our whole being – heart, soul, and mind – he told them the second most important thing God asks of us is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. In Luke 10, a religious leader tries to catch Jesus off guard and asks, “And who is my neighbor?”

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, who – despite belonging to a religious and ethnic group that were long-standing enemies of the Jews – goes out of his way to show love to an injured Jewish man.

Loving our neighbor means showing compassion even to those who look or believe differently from us or those we don’t think deserve it. It is love that believes God created all humankind and that all persons deserve to be treated with dignity and to know God’s love, shared through us. Is it always easy? No way! But when we remember that God loves us, faults and all, we can extend this love to the world.

Stella Perrin

Pray

God of perfect love, help me to allow your love to flow through me – even and especially to those whom I find the most difficult to love. Amen.

Go

Go,

Offering yourself fully to God, faults and all,

Believing that God loves you without reservation,

As you seek to love God and the world with all that you are.