Loving Your NeighborSample

I can’t see other people hurting and look the other way. My heart breaks when I see their pain. Passion means entering into the pain and hurt of other people. That’s what Jesus is looking for us to do. When we walked the streets of Mendenhall, Mississippi, many years ago helping people get registered to vote, we drove through the countryside and sat with people in their cramped shanties. Our hearts ached for their need for decent housing. That stirring in our hearts led to the first black housing development in that area. At every turn, whenever we saw a need, we were compelled to do whatever we could to minister to that need.

Whenever we saw a need, we wanted to be like the Good Samaritan. We wanted to be the hands and feet of Jesus for people who were hurting. I remember a woman whose son was living in Chicago. He had become so sick that doctors didn’t expect him to live much longer. But for his mother, she wanted nothing more than to see her son one more time and bring him back to Mississippi before he died. Then, it was questionable for a woman to get on the train or any public transportation because of the cost and concern of traveling alone through the south.  So we drove her to Chicago to get her son and brought him back to Mississippi. I can’t put into words the joy on that mother’s face to see her son one more time, to hold him one more time. I learned a lot about what it means to enter into the pain of someone else. Their pain becomes our pain. Their joy becomes our joy.

Jesus told us that it isn’t the healthy people that need doctors, but the sick. It’s the hurting. It’s the broken. We should examine the symptoms of our broken world, diagnose the causes and dedicate our lives to healing those wounds.

Our world today is full of hurting people. You almost have to have a blindfold on to avoid seeing them when you walk the streets. They are the homeless. They are the ladies of the night. They are the young people without purpose who stalk our streets. They are the drug dealers and the addicted. They are the outcasts of our day . . . the very people Jesus would be sharing a meal with and spending His time with. They are people who are on the other side of the hard lines that we have drawn. Sometimes those hard lines have to do with class or religion. Other times those lines are all about the color of skin.