In our last post we talked about the four kinds of neighbor, and particularly the fourth kind. These neighbors leave near us, in our very midst, but we don’t know them, and we don’t know what they need. That is, we don’t know what they need in particular. In general, we know that they need God’s love. (They might, in fact, already be well-acquainted with God’s love…but we don’t even know that about them.)
What sorts of things can we do to show them God’s love? There are many possibilities. What sorts of things can we do that they will accept? That’s trickier.
Let’s see how we can love others in general, and then see which of them apply to these unknown neighbors.
- We can meet their physical needs.
- We can be a friend in need, listening to their troubles and offering advice and emotional support.
- We can tell them the Goods News of rebirth and resurrection in Jesus Christ.
- We can pray for them, for specific needs and for God’s blessing upon them.
We can meet their physical needs—but by definition, these neighbors have no obvious physical needs that we can see from outside. And we don’t know them personally, and so can’t see the needs that aren’t obvious. We haven’t time to meet them all. And knocking on their door and saying, “Hi, God loves you and I want to show you His love. What do you need?” is unlikely to be fruitful in the majority of cases. A polite “Nothing, thanks,” is the most likely response.
The possibility of being a friend in need fails for the same reason; these are neighbors we don’t know, and we don’t have time to befriend them all; nor would they necessarily welcome our advances.
This leaves two possibilities: we can show them God’s love in ways that do not require us to know them, or we can somehow encourage them to seek us out.
We’ll talk about this and the third and fourth ways to love them in subsequent posts.