The Neighbor
Dolly says we're supposed to love one another, love our neighbor as ourselves...
Simple words.
Words that sound like they were gathered from a front porch swing, a church pew, a kitchen table where coffee is shared and no one leaves hungry.
Yet beneath those simple words is a mystery as deep as God.
This summer our youth went looking for ways to serve.
They found children laughing. Parents hoping. Neighbors carrying more sorrow than they could carry alone.
They met people the world often passes by.
And there, without fanfare, without spotlight, without anyone calling it holy,
they found Christ.
Not high above them.
Not waiting in some distant heaven.
But sitting beside them in a shelter, at a table, on a sidewalk, in a conversation.
The face of God wearing ordinary clothes.
The heart of God beating beneath another human life.
Perhaps that is what Dolly has always known.
Her sacramental way of seeing ordinary people.
The conviction that every person matters.
That every soul carries a story.
That the woman stocking shelves, the child on the playground, the man sleeping beneath a bridge, the grandmother praying through another difficult day,
all shine with a hidden light.
Not because they have earned it.
Not because they are successful.
But because they belong to God.
And what our youth discovered is that compassion begins there.
Not with fixing.
Not with saving.
Not with having the answers.
But with seeing.
Really seeing.
To look into another face and recognize someone beloved.
To stand before another life and quietly remove your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground.
Lord,
give us eyes like that.
Eyes that can recognize the sacred hidden in plain sight.
Teach us to find Your presence where power tells us not to look.
In forgotten places. Among overlooked people. At the edges of our attention.
And may we learn, as our youth have learned, and as Dolly keeps reminding us,
that loving our neighbor is not merely a good deed.
It is a way of seeing.
A way of belonging.
A way of discovering that the whole world is filled with ordinary people
glowing with the light of Your love.
Amen.