Who Is My Neighbor?

Several years ago, I worked in a hospital emergency room, greeting patients and families as they entered the ER. My responsibility was to see that everyone was as comfortable as possible while waiting for treatment. Just a few months into my employment, I began to know our “regulars.” These were folks whose emotional pain was deeper than the physical. Some were there to medicate their heartache as they found the strength to cry out for help. My own heart ached for them each time they stepped through the door. The memories of my own struggles were revived as each soul came up to my desk and asked for help.

My mid-twenties were filled with angst. Self-harm did nothing to ease the pain I felt from the loss and disappointment I’d experienced. It was if I was lying alongside the road, beat up and emotionally bleeding, but my faith community walked by on their way to minister to others. Fellow believers weren’t sure what to do with emotional issues that intersected faith. Trying to find out where I fit in a world that changed the mold everyday left me seeking life where there was only death. Stepping away from my faith, I thought I had found solace in a world where more folks were willing to be my “neighbor.”

The parable of the good Samaritan is a staple in Sunday school curriculum. Jesus, while being tested by the religious leaders, told this story in response to a question intended to discredit him. He revealed the heart of a God whose commandment to love the Lord extends to one just like it: “Love your neighbor.” The leaders unsatisfied, their question “Who is my neighbor?” led to a discussion even his disciples didn’t see coming. In that emergency room, now in my mid-forties, I began to realize how this story intersected with the stories I saw in the ER.

Jesus’s parable about a man who was robbed, beaten, bleeding, and left to die on the side of the road as various travelers passed by came alive for me there. Those people who passed by on the other side of the road were going to minister to their own congregations. They were serving in the temple and afraid of becoming unclean. Caught up in their own scheduled ministry, they passed up a chance to serve their neighbor.

The Samaritan wasn’t just any outsider. We use the word Samaritan freely as a person who comes to the aid of another, but we mustn’t forget that the Samaritans were despised. In Jewish culture, Samaritans weren’t to be trusted or befriended. As a group, they didn’t mingle with Hebrews either. The “Good Samaritan”—as we now know him—would have been considered an anomaly. This story Jesus told would have been shocking, to say the least. Jesus portrayal of a Samaritan stepping in to do what the church wouldn’t rose to a whole new level of loving your enemy.

During my ER days, many broken souls in our own community who needed to find healing and hope came to a hospital instead of a church. It wasn’t that our local congregations were altogether unfriendly, but they were busy. Mission trips to other countries were all the rage. Bake sales, spaghetti feeds, and auctions were held to raise money for youth who wanted to travel to Mexico to help at an orphanage for disabled children. But sadly, when our focus is on places far away, it’s harder to see what’s close. The people in our own communities become blurry as we set our sights on those faraway places.

Please understand me. Our global neighbors need our attention. They need our love, and we are called to go into every nation. We are absolutely supposed to visit prisons and those who are sick. We are to reach out to the “least of these.” What we’re not supposed to do, though, is bypass those in our own neighborhood. Those souls who are beaten, robbed, and bleeding. Every day, people are crying out for someone to help them find healing. Why is it harder to love our neighbors at home? When they’re aching, why are we too busy to hold their hands and wipe away their tears? Do we offer strength to the suffering? Or do we scurry off to the next thing?

As a young adult, I had an encounter with a neighbor that has defined how I look at what’s important. One Thursday evening I was removing a sign from the door of my apartment that said Bible Study here tonight. For various reasons, no one had shown up for our weekly meeting. As I was removing the notice, the young mother who shared my hall opened her door. She asked about the Bible study and if  I would talk to her about the Bible. She said she’d been thinking a lot about God lately, and she had questions. To this day I don’t know why I didn’t invite her inside. I just glibly said, “Sure! Come on over next Thursday and join us!” With that I closed the door on the conversation, but worse, on an opportunity to share.

On Sunday afternoon I returned from church to find our apartment building blocked by a crowd and cordoned off with yellow police tape. The young mother seeking God had taken her own life, leaving a husband, child, and a thousand what-ifs in my mind. My biggest question was, Why didn’t I just stop that night and share love and hope? I had no guarantee that she would have chosen a different path, but at least I would have known that I had given her my time.

We all have times when we get busy, preoccupied, or even scared. Often, we think we need to know more to be qualified to share. The truth is that more than anything, we need to choose love. We need to stop focusing on positions we seek or spending time in meetings about fulfilling needs and just meet the needs of those we pass by every day. It’s simple, but our human minds like to complicate these things.

What if we did for our neighbors what is done on mission trips? We all have schools nearby needing help in some way or another. Schools in lower income neighborhoods have clothes closets that need sorting. What about the elderly neighbor who needs her lawn mowed or the young mom who needs a break? Using our words to make someone’s day is a beautiful way to love. Bob Goff encourages his readers to “just be love” and “tell people who they are.” When my daughter was young, we couldn’t drop her off at Sunday school because some of the people there were afraid of a child with disabilities. It would have been a great opportunity for someone who wanted to serve on the mission field to train right here in the States! Our daughter’s attendant served in South America for a few years.

We have opportunities to follow Jesus’s mandate all around us. As you prepare your heart to love, may you find joy and purpose.

Jemelene Wilson is a passionate storyteller who writes of faith, hope, love, and food. She’s madly in love with her pastor husband and mama bear to two daughters. Grace is a fairly new concept she is exploring with her life and words. Mama Jem believes we should live gently and love passionately. You can find more of her writing at jemelene.com.

Photograph © Annie Spratt, used with permission