Will You Be My Neighbor?Sample

My neighbor who doesn’t look like me

Growing up, I always found myself not fitting in because of my skin color, my background, or where I lived. And because of this struggle, I put limits on myself. It wasn't until later in my life that I found out that God was using my feelings of being different to help me encourage others who felt the same. God created diversity to bring us together. We read in the Bible that the Roman church was a diverse community. It was made up of Jews & Gentiles, slaves and free people, rich and poor, strong and weak. As we read what Paul writes to them in the book of Romans, we see that it seemed very difficult for the different groups in the Roman church to accept one another because of their differences. 

How do we accept someone who is different than us? We avoid favoritism. Favoritism is giving unfair, preferential treatment to something or someone. It’s going with something or someone you are most familiar with and know a lot about. It’s important to avoid favoritism and to learn more about people who look different from us so that we can learn to appreciate and celebrate the differences that God gave us. This requires that we build a deeper relationship with others by engaging in conversations, asking questions, and actively listening to people who might look different, who might be from different places, or who might have different backgrounds. Just like Jesus wants to have a deeper relationship with us, He also expects us to have deep and intentional relationships with each other! 

By avoiding favoritism and intentionally learning about others, you are accepting others just like Jesus has accepted you! 

Action Item: Ask God to help you consciously spend time learning about those who you don’t know much about. Ask Him to help you minimize differences and to seek common ground among you. Today to reach out to someone that you consider different from you and learn more about them. Learn where their family originates from, how they were raised, where they were born, and anything else you are curious about!