Devotional: Let’s have some real talk, “Who is my neighbor?” While the question may be a rhetorical one, some of us really want to know who our neighbors are. Are we talking about those people who live on our street? Are we talking about people who live in our neighborhood? Are we talking about people in our community? Are we talking about people in our city?

 

Growing up in the islands, I thought of neighbors as those people who lived across the street or next door and maybe the people in our surrounding areas. As neighbors, we knew that we could count on each other if we ran out of small things to needing something more serious, like being there in tough times and beyond.

 

Today, defining “neighbor” has become an individual thing and not quite so easy to define at times. Through technology, we have changed our definition of “neighbor.” We can now consider someone who lives in another state or another country our neighbors. When a natural disaster occurs or we see hungry children and families around the globe, we realize that we are part of a much bigger neighborhood. We are indeed a global family with global neighbors. Thankfully we have a global God as well.

 

During this season of Lent, expand your definition of “neighbor.” Is God calling you to be a neighbor to someone in your own community, in another state, or across the world? Maybe it’s all of the above.