Fresh Eyes On Famous Bible Sayings - Love Your NeighborSample

Do Protect

This spirit of loving your chronological neighbors will also keep you alert to potential problems in other people’s paths. Even seemingly simple or small things. In fact, our moral development may often advance most by finally seeing and seizing the seemingly trivial opportunities to “do what’s right.” Sensitizing and fine-tuning the conscience create the alertness and clarity necessary to practice the bigger things.

If you’re riding your bike and notice a nail in the road, don’t just ride around it—stop and pick it up so it won’t puncture some other person’s tire, even though that person will never know you spared his or her tire. Or rather than avoiding the gum in the parking lot, pick it up with a scrap of paper so other people won’t track it into their houses or have to spend ten minutes trying to scrape it off their soles. You could be preventing a much bigger frustration for the next person. Why not take the time to replace the toilet paper on the roll? Or make the bed? Or leave a kind note? Or express gratitude for that small thing someone did?

These little things don’t seem to have eternal significance. They won’t directly communicate the gospel or lead a person to faith. They don’t require divine wisdom or a supernatural power. Even other religions and secular ethics propose similar care and kindness for strangers who come after us. The act itself is not the point of loving your neighbor, whether geographical or chronological. The point is why we do it: to honor the Lord by obeying His command to love our neighbor.

That’s our heavenly Father’s mantra.

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