Loving Our Neighbors

“For the whole law is fulfilled in one word in the statement, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Galatians 5:14

Hi Blog Friends! I’m so happy you are here! Today I want to reflect on this verse because it is something that I struggle with and know many others do as well. As a Christian, following God’s law and the 10 commandments all the time can be so difficult. There are so many little things to remember, and sometimes I feel like no matter what I do, I’m going to mess up and make God sad. But thankfully, God doesn’t want us to feel stressed out trying to remember every little rule. Jesus summarizes the 10 commandments by saying we should love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds and love our neighbors as ourselves. That makes life so much easier!!!

The specific piece I am reflecting on today is to “love your neighbor as yourself”. To me, this means to treat others with love even when you feel they are purposely hurting you or they are just different from you. The way I look at it is that I picture myself nine years ago. I was way different than who I am now. I honestly don’t know how much I would even have in common with my 8-year-old self. I was shy and spent all my time in my room. My favorite show was Phineas and Ferb, and I lived off of Junior Mints and pizza. I don’t even like pizza anymore. BUTTTT... if I met her today, I would treat her with love despite these differences. I was still a child of God then and I want the best for myself. The same has to go for our neighbors. We shouldn’t just want the best for ourselves. We should want the best for all of God’s children, which is everyone!

When I started looking at everyone as a child of God instead of their earthly titles, it completely altered my perspective on how to love. When people hurt me, I’ve begun to tell myself to look at them and think of how much God loves them. If God can love this person, so can I. There’s so much good in all of God’s creation. This includes the people who do things to annoy and hurt me. Sometimes I have to be reminded of that, but that’s okay! I want people to see past my flaws too. The truth is, nobody is perfect except for God. Not whoever is reading this. Especially not me. I don’t define myself by my mistakes because God doesn’t define me by my sins… SOOO I shouldn’t define others by theirs either. We are all part of one Body in Christ. This is what I think it means to “love your neighbor as yourself”. <3

Signing Out,

Mir