Choosing the Right Neighbors

There is a poem about hedging your bets that starts, "Always trust you fellow man and always cut the cards."  I first read it in the book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten  by Robert Fulghum.  It is reprinted here if you are interested in reading it.   One line in the poem goes, "Always love thy neighbor.  And always pick a good neighborhood to live in."  Loving thy neighbor is easy when your neighbors are easy to love.

They say that the three most important things to consider in real estate are location, location, location.  When picking a place to live the surroundings are at least as important as the dwelling itself.  How close are the houses to each other?  What school district?  How often are the police called?  

Some people live in gated communities.  There is a fence around the whole thing and a guard out front sending away those who do not belong.  Other communities don't have a physical gate but only certain types of people live there and the "wrong type" of visitor may be stopped and asked ther business.  In small towns the "gate" comes from the fact that you know the people around you and strangers have a tendency to stick out.  I remember when we were house shopping and we were driving out to look at a house that was listed.  We were on a dirt road a ways back, and a man walks out to the road and stops us.  He asked if he could help us (evidently people didn't come down this road very often).  He was friendly and helped us figure out where the house was.  It seems that we had found the gatehouse for that community.

I think there are a lot of problems that don't get solved because people have an attitude that says, "It's not my problem, It's their problem."  There are a lot of problems that are fixable when we all pitch in.  There was a big storm yesterday.  Down the road there were large tents set up for an Amish wedding going on today.  The tents didn't fare well.  They were blown over and tables and chairs and plates were all scattered. The neighbors dropped everything and ran to help and by suppertime, things were back together.  We need to have that same attitude of working together in all of our relations.

Loving thy neighbor is easy when your neighbor is easy to love.  Loving they neighbor is easier when your neighbor is like you.  But (and there is always a but) God calls us to love our neighbor when it isn't easy.  If we define who our neighbor is in very broad terms, then our calling is different.  In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus teaches that our neighbor is anyone around us who has a need, whether or not they look like us.

Watch this clip from Pastor Lowell.

"Always love thy neighbor.  And always pick a good neighborhood to live in."  It is probably prudent advice for buying real estate, but God calls us for more.  We need to be watchful for those who have needs and see their problems as our problems.  That's what being neighborly is all about.