Devotion - Tuesday, December 12

The great commandment (love God, love neighbor as self) is repeated in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  Only in Luke do we get the follow up parable of the Good Samaritan - which provides an interpretation of who is to be considered our neighbor.  The other two gospel writers provide no such instructions.  We are left to form our own understanding of who is our neighbor.

Left on our own, we tend to restrict that designation.

Most of the best things which have happened in my life occurred because someone who didn't even know my name gave me a gift.  The residents of Lincoln County, NC, hired David Choate to work with the 4-H program.  He came to know my name, and to expose to me a world which I would have found difficult to discover from the part-time farm worked by mill-hands.

The folks in 1969 who formed Lutheran Student Movement-USA did not have me in mind, but their organizing and planning for participation in a global youth movement allowed me to serve as Secretary for International Concerns, which resulted in my first ever letter from a Christian sister on the other side of the world.  (She lived in Tanzania.)

Jesus' great commandment is clear - we are to love God, and we are to love neighbor.  It is in loving God, and loving neighbor that we follow the way of Jesus.