40acts: Ready to ActSample

Act 16: Neighbours

In our busy lives, interactions with our neighbours are often limited to a quick hello and a wave as they drive past – and that’s if we see them at all. Today, be intentional about the people who live round you. Make a point of going outside when you see others about. Conversation by conversation you can change the atmosphere in your street.

‘I confess to having had a dose of street envy as a young mum. I fancied the idea of being able to let my kids play out with others on the street and even having the odd street party. Such dreams can be dented when living on a road where the average speed zaps in at 50 mph. So what to do once you’ve got the speed bumps installed? We took the baton from neighbours who had generously offered their home for Christmas drinks for five years and when they left the road, we took it on. We started going from door to door, sometimes in the summer, sometimes at Christmas, inviting everyone to come to ours to make a party for the whole street.’

Jesus puts our neighbour squarely in his second commandment, and Romans 15:2 places our neighbour at the centre of our attention: ‘Let each of us please his neighbour for his good, to build him up.’ The rubber hits the road as we look at what Paul has just written in his letter to the Romans. A few chapters before, he laid out his plea to Christians who follow the way Jesus laid out for us: ‘I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship’ (12:1). As a living sacrifice, you are no longer concerned with your own welfare as a priority. The sacrifice is no longer alive. It no longer puts its own survival first. Your number one is no longer ‘looking out for number one’. 

What this means is that you get to share in Jesus’ outwards-focused life. Just like his endlessly generous heart is always looking to the good of the other, yours gets to too. As you make living as a living sacrifice your main thing, you are freed up to live for others, beyond the borders of yourself.