To learn to love a neighbor is a lifetime lesson.  It is not something that is mastered.  The neighbors keep changing.  We keep changing.  Our life circumstances keep changing.  The call to love never changes...

I thought I learned how to love my neighbors during the seven years I was a participant and then a staff member at Mountain T.O.P., a ministry in Tennessee that is truly a “love in action” classroom where the people of the Cumberland Mountains are served by youth and adults in the way of home repair as well as programs for local youth and children.

I made a different discovery when I recently had the opportunity to go home and be present with my parents who are in the middle of the battle that is cancer, one with surgery and the other with chemotherapy.   Going home, I had time to spend with the neighbors I grew up with, neighbors that were stopping over to love and care for my parents, the same neighbors were a part of the “village” that raised me.  Neighbors brought food, weeded flower beds, cleaned the house, tilled the garden, and simply spent time visiting and listening.  Reflecting on this made me realize, I have been learning to love my neighbor my whole life. 

It is easy to love these neighbors.  People I have known my whole life, who also love me.  Our call to love our neighbor as ourselves takes us further down the road to the extra mile.  It urges us to keep climbing higher and love even when it is not easy.  It is hard to love others when you are suffering yourself or when you do not understand someone no matter what the differences are, yet the still small voice will continue to urge us to move in the ways of love even in these circumstances.    It has become clear to me that though it is a good thing to get behind worthy causes and love all God’s people far and near, it is loving the folks whose paths you cross every day in real and tangible ways that make a long and lasting impact.