With the Good Samaritan parable in Luke, Jesus tells us that when we strive to parse and limit those we should care about, our hearts are in the wrong place. When Jesus expands the idea of who a good neighbor is to someone we might not even want to nod at on the street, he turns the question on its head.
This isn’t about who counts and who doesn’t. Everyone counts, Jesus says, everyone from the powerless to the powerful, no matter what they believe or in what position they find themselves. Behold: The world is made up of our neighbors. What if we acted like it?
This message is an excerpt of “Unexpected neighbors” by Cara Strickland in the March 2018 issue of Gather magazine.
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