BE A NEIGHBOR ♥︎

I was open with a handful of people I felt I could trust. But so often, people would just look at me wide-eyed and either change the subject or tell me that everything happens for a reason.

I was left to grow up in an extremely challenging and abusive home. And for a long time, I carried that quietly — not because I wanted to, but because the responses I received taught me that my situation made people uncomfortable. That discomfort became their reason to look away.

Everyone’s story is different. But I understand the feeling of being stuck without the help of the people who were able to give it. So often, the people who can help, don’t — because it requires stepping into something that disrupts. It gets messy. And so many are simply not willing.

What I find myself struggling to understand is how people can not only justify the mistreatment of others — people suffering, people dying — but applaud it.

Loving your neighbor as yourself means more than a phrase we agree with. It means understanding someone’s burden. Feeling it. Sitting in the weight of it with them.

Some people don’t have the power or the means to pull themselves out of the situation they’re in. Are they a burden? Are they not worth the effort? Do we just stare wide-eyed and say it’s all happening for a reason?

I’ve been told the reason I care is because I’m a “passionate” person. As if passion is the explanation — something particular to my personality that others simply don’t share.

I think I care because I’ve been in a place of desperation. I know what it feels like to be hopeless and to look around and realize the people who could help “had enough going on.” I know how it feels when your suffering is an inconvenience to someone else’s comfort.

That’s not passion. That’s memory. That’s empathy. And more of us should have it.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, it wasn’t the pastor, the professor, or the church leader who stopped. It was the outsider. The one considered theologically corrupt and socially inferior. Yet this was the one who showed mercy.

Who is the neighbor?

It’s not about proximity. It’s not about party. It’s about action.

Who is a neighbor?

The one who shows mercy.

Be a neighbor!