Love Your Neighbor

This St. Patrick’s Day is also “Match Day”.  It is a day when med school students about to graduate get “matched” with a hospital for their residency.  It is a complicated process with a big algorithm and it will affect the lives of my niece and her husband as they are both about to be “matched”.

My sister is planning a dinner to either celebrate or commiserate and my son and I were invited, but my husband was not.  My sister said it was because she wants to be sure her daughter is surrounded by the people she loves and has a long term relationship with. 

I know my niece and husband have different views on a lot of things and their interactions haven’t always been fun for my niece (though if you asked my husband he thinks they were just having a debate…).   In any case, while I understand Mindy’s rationale, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

In Mark 12:31 Jesus tells us to “love our neighbor”, but the truth is there are people in our lives that we just don’t love, or in many cases even like - so how do we go about changing that?

First, seek the GOOD on purpose.  Challenge yourself to find something you like, appreciate, or admire about them.  To do that you will have to set aside judgement, bias and prejudice, but finding something to connect with is a necessary step to "loving the unlovable". 

Next, learn to let go of judgemental responses.  Humans often think in terms of “us” and “them” (a fact I think is at the root of much of the conflict we see in our world today).  In many cases, those we see as different even become “vilified”.  But if we accept that each person was made by God, and that He loves each of us, then we must catch ourselves when we start putting people into boxes.  We should avoid “judging a book by its cover”, or even by our first few interactions, and we should work to accept differences.

Finally, we must continue to persevere and pray.  I do not mean a prayer that the person you dislike will change, move, or even die, but rather a prayer that your heart will change and your eyes will begin to see that person as God sees them. 

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