Let each of us please his neighbour for his good, to build him up. Romans 15:2
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Galatians 5:14
Seeing a video on Facebook about how thieves operate in a particular country sparked my wishful thinking.
Indeed, when we love our neighbour as we love ourselves, there’s always peace and order in the community.
Committing to this rule is much cheaper than building a fence or installing a state-of-the-art security surveillance system.
Real estate developers in the Philippines try to recreate a neighbourhood and make “peace and order”, “security”, and “safety” their primary selling points. Some would even attach the term “exclusive community”.
We thank the Lord for enabling us to live in a community with firm neighbourhood values.
A schoolmate who lived in downtown Auckland, parking on the street for the night, forgot to close his car window. He was so happy nothing was lost, nor someone vandalised his car.
Well, we could say he was just lucky. How about these?
We lived in Forrest Hill, Auckland, and we were about to sleep at past 10:00 PM when someone knocked on our door.
It was our Korean neighbour. She apologised for disturbing us. Then she told us that we had left our car door open.
Yes, it was wide open because our 7-year-old forgot to close it after getting off the car. Our car is parked on the street.
Living in Timaru now, one of our Kiwi friends noticed how I would unlock and lock the door.
I told him that it’d always been a habit in the Philippines to keep the door locked even if we were in the house.
There was a time we get off my car as I parked on the side street. Then I locked the doors. He said, “Oh, Jonan, you don’t trust your neighbours?”
I blushed and laughed, telling him, “It’s just a hard habit to break, mate.”
These are just bits and pieces of why New Zealand is the safest country in the world.
When people bind the law “Love your neighbour as yourself” in their hearts, there will be much peace and order in the community.
It’s nice to live in such a great place where good people are surrounding you…here in Saudi Arabia, we should see to it that we lock car doors and the main gate; we even install CCTV camera (in case the religious police will visit us during our worship)…praying that someday, our Muslim neighbors will love us that much that they will allow us to worship freely. For now, we are thankful to God that He give us a friendly neighbor who never complains when some members unknowingly park in his parking space during our services.
struggling on how to love my neighbor..
Nong, that’s understandable because there’s always a part in us that doesn’t want to love esp. when your neighbour has done unlovable things to you or to others.
On the other hand, when we just focus on doing (persuading or even forcing ourselves) to love our neighbour for the ultimate sake of obeying Christ and we are doing it because of our love for God then things might change.
We are caught between thinking our neighbour might be “lalaki ang ulo” (swell head) or “ibibigay ang papuri sa Diyos” (giving glory to God) if we love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Praying for you.