Love Your Neighbor

You say love your neighbor as yourself, And I ask, Lord, who is my neighbor? Only the friend who thinks like me, Who prays the way I pray, who shares my pew?

Or the one who cut me off in traffic, Whose life I have judged without knowing their name, The widow on the corner I pretend not to see, The stranger at my gate I cannot pass by?

You say love your neighbor as yourself, And I am slow to love even me, Hard on the body You have made, Harsh on the soul You have saved.

So teach me, Lord, to love as You have loved, To see the image stamped on every human face, Your likeness carved where no power can take it away, The Caesar coin was small compared to this.

For the neighbor is the one who stands within reach, Not the one who earned my love, And love is not a feeling, it is a craft I learn, It is the meal I make for the hungry, The coat I give when the cold bites hard, The visit to the one in the prison cell.

Your Son did not love from a distance, Lord, He touched the leper, ate with the outcast, He wept with the sisters at the tomb, And washed the feet that would betray Him.

So love my neighbor as myself, O God, Because You have made them, and in making them, You stamped Your image on every soul, Until love is not a law I keep, But the bread I break and the life I live.

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“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” — Mark 12:31