Action to consider this week: Grab a pen and paper and make a list of the ways you could love your neighbors (or a specific neighbor) as yourself this week.
Jesus is our example for many things, including what it looks like to be generous and compassionate.
40A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” 41Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”
(Mark 1:40-41, NRSV)
Jesus’ ability to heal people through touch is not something you or I can do; however, there is still a question from the story of Jesus and the leper that we should ponder. Are we willing and prepared to be filled with compassion and offer up what we can when a neighbor cries out?
The first part of the question - are we willing and prepared to be filled with compassion - is hopefully something you can say “yes” to based on the work you’ve been doing for the previous few weeks. The second part of the question - offering up what we can - is something you will have to be prayerfully considering as an individual and with your Arborlawn neighbors.
Some of you will choose to be more proactive, seeking out ways to help people in your neighborhood. Others of you aren’t as comfortable being proactive and instead will use your energy for the occasions that a neighbor reaches out to you directly. Either way, whether it is through your time, your resources, or both, we each can do something that helps us to be better neighbors. Imagine that your actions through this sermon series leads to your neighborhood becoming the kind of community where everyone loves their neighbors as they love themselves. No action is too small. God can take ordinary people and actions and transform them into something beautiful. Your kindness today might be planting seeds in your neighborhood that you’ll never see grow into fruit, but know that God is working in the midst of what you are thinking and doing. God will nurture the seeds you plant, and your neighborhood will be blessed by your faithfulness.
Prayer:
Good and loving God, you don’t have to think twice about it when we cry out to you. Like the leper, we feel inadequate and unworthy of doing your work. Yet you choose to love and cherish us; you bring us closer into the fold and make us clean and whole. Encourage our hearts to be generous with our compassion, so that our neighbors will see you and know you more. Amen.
Written By: Jenny Spidell