40acts: The Lent Generosity ChallengeSample

How well do you know your neighbours?

In Mark 12:31, Jesus doesn’t tell us to like our neighbour or tolerate him. We have to love our neighbours as ourselves. To put this commandment into perspective, let’s remember that Jesus was replying to one of the teachers of the law, a bureaucrat who was trying to trip him up. Loving our neighbour as ourselves is the greatest commandment, above all others, apart from loving the Lord with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength.

We’d recently moved our family home to pioneer a new church plant and realised this huge green monster of a hedge at the end of the garden needed cutting back. Our next-door neighbour had kindly offered to lend us his electric hedge trimmer, so one summer’s day I started the mammoth task.

I ventured in and out of our neighbour’s garden to trim his side of the hedge. We passed things back and forth over the fence and laughed together, joking about the size of the job. I then visited our other neighbour who’s well into her 90s. I offered to trim her side of the hedge too.

Just as I was near finishing the job, disaster struck and the hedge trimmer gave up. Clearly overwhelmed by the enormous task, it just sort of died! What would I tell my neighbour? 

I went online and found a replacement. I decided it would be nice to upgrade it to a more powerful one. This decision certainly wasn’t convenient, nor cheap, but as I completed the purchase I felt a genuine joy within at being able to give him a brand new trimmer to replace the one he’d entrusted to me. He was genuinely overwhelmed and decided that this new model would be ours to share. 

It started with an overgrown hedge and now we have a communal neighbourhood hedge trimmer and a shared story of struggle, teamwork and generosity.

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The Bible gives us permission to ask our neighbours for help in Exodus 11:2. These days, it’s more likely to be a cup of sugar than an article of gold, but you get the point. Loving your neighbour can take many forms.

 Find more about today’s 40acts challenge on our blog:   

https://40acts.org.uk/act-19-next-door/