I was thinking the other night of Jesus' command to "Love thy neighbor", and wishing I had something meaningful to do to carry this out.
Well, in the space of less than a day and a half, 3 ways to do this came to thought:
The trash pick-up on our street was delayed from early morning to after dark. It occurred to me to go out and roll my next-door neighbor's trash receptacle up her long driveway to right in front of her garage. Such a simple thing to do. The phone rang almost the minute I got back in the house. She was just about to go out and get it herself She said, "Bless your heart for doing this!" It meant more to her than I expected.
Then, at Starbuck where I often go for breakfast, I asked the manager, "How is your daughter?" She and I had had a run-in much earlier over a botched-up order, and had not greeted each other too warmly. She beamed (as mothers seem to do) and got out her phone with a photo of her 2-year old. My asking pleased her no end.
And I felt led to email a friend in another state who had been worried about getting through the winter in a l25-year old farm house. My asking, "How are things?" meant way more to her than I thought it would. My reaching out to her apparently came at the right time as she was missing a family member no longer with her.
So, this all showed me we don't have to do something spectacular to love our neighbors.
