Won't You Be My Neighbor?

 "Love your neighbor.”  What does that even mean?  What does it look like in action?

We have some pretty great neighbors in our sleepy community north of Spokane.  Several of them are the kind of people that you could call to borrow a cup of sugar or even to change a flat tire.  They are the people who will check in to make sure everything is good.  In a lot of neighborhoods these days, people don’t really interact.  Many are an independent lot who might wave or say hello, but it doesn’t go beyond those courtesies.  And there are some that seem to just want to keep their distance and pretend they don’t live in a neighborhood.

A couple of days ago our next door neighbor sent me a Facebook message.  One of their very large (think horse-sized) canine companions had gotten upset and tried to dig to get out of their yard when they weren’t home.  Now mind you, Thor is a HUGE mastiff.  He doesn’t have a vicious bone in his body, but he can be pretty intimidating with his size and bark.  She had gotten a message that Thor was pinned under their fence and she asked if I could go check on him.  He’s harmless, she said.  Of course I would go.  I burst out of our door and hurried to where he was stuck.  And he truly was pinned.  The poor guy managed to get his upper body under the metal fence, but about 2/3 of the way through, the metal base of the fence dug into his back and he couldn’t go any further.  He wasn’t bleeding or whimpering, but he was panting and clearly in distress.  I could tell this was a bigger job than I could do.  His owner “dad” was on his way, so I just tried to comfort Thor as best I could.  If you know anything about mastiffs, this involved a great deal of drool and dirt.  At one point he just laid his giant drooly head on my feet.  Soon our neighbor showed up, dug him out and I came home and wiped off the slobber. 

I tell this story only because I did not think twice when our neighbor needed help.  I absolutely knew they would do the same for me.  But here’s my question.  Who is our neighbor?  Are they the people I know would reciprocate or the ones who just wave as they pass by? What about the unfriendly ones?  What would I do for them?  Are they the people we live near or is our neighbor anyone we come in contact with?

I want my heart to be so open that I would help a stranger without any expectation of getting anything in return.  There may even be risk in putting myself out there that way with someone I don’t know or who may have issues I don’t understand.  But God does not only choose the “safe neighbors”.  Not a single solitary person is outside of His love.  Who knows who might come to understand that love if I live it out just by just being kind, showing up, offering to help?

So I have to ask, who is your neighbor?  What does it mean to love them?  I think we’re called to do the small things and sometimes the big things to show our neighbors what love really is.  Even if big means comforting a very large slobbery dog who just needed some love till his parents got home.