Loving Your Neighbors

In response to a question as to what is the most important of God's commandments, Jesus says:

"And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these."

Today was a curious day for churches, not just the churches here in Dulce, but all over the world. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic a great many churches were closed for worship, moving what they could of their ordinary Sunday ministry online, in order to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Our congregation was no different, making the decision last week to cancel worship for this Sunday and next week. We could easily find ourselves closed longer, as we move into April and see how the situation develops.

What does it mean to "love your neighbor?" What does loving your neighbor look like?

For our congregation today, one glimpse of loving our neighbors looks like the picture above. Our sanctuary, empty, so that a disease that can be present for several days without showing any symptoms is not inadvertently spread through our congregation as we worship.

Loving our neighbors also looks like this, which is a link to the sermon I was looking forward to preaching this morning. I spent a bit of time this week figuring out how to improve what we had done last week, when the sermon was streamed via Facebook live. This week I created a church YouTube channel and learned how to record the sermon on my laptop and then upload it to YouTube. It was a marked improvement from last week and I'm sure that next week my ability to use the technology will continue to get better. I also hope to be able to find some other ways to nurture our congregation online until the Sunday morning when we will be able to gather again in person.

As a pastor, on a Sunday morning, these are two examples where I have been called to love the neighbors who make up the congregation I serve. The call to "love your neighbor as yourself" is one that applies to every follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. How is God inviting you to love your neighbor, and to love God as you do so, during these days?  May you be faithful in seeing those opportunities and then serving the Lord in them, to his eternal glory.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.