"Love your neighbor as yourself."
-Matthew 22:39 NIV
That's a pretty big deal - to "love your neighbor as yourself." It becomes an even bigger deal after "an expert in the law" asks Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" in Luke 10:29. In classic Jesus-style, He responds in a parable that makes it crystal clear {read the full details in Luke 10:25-37}. The story of the Good Samaritan shows us that a neighbor is not defined by location, creed, or status, but by mere humanity. As human beings on this planet earth, all descended first from Adam & Eve, & then Noah & his boatload of kin, we are more than neighbors, but fellow relations {created by our Father God} who are called to love our other billions of fellow relations as we love our own self. Can you say deep? That's some ocean full of purpose right there! If we were truly to love others - all others - as we love ourselves what would that look like? What would change? Would we share our faith more, extend our grace further, take the chances we are given every time, & truly live & love to the full? While we are but flesh & bone humans & our progress is at best imperfect, we can seek to every day show more godly love {the love that the Samaritan showed/the love that Christ showed}. We can try to, in our own imperfect way, "love our neighbors as our self."
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I've seen many neighbors come & go since I moved into my apartment nearly 3 years ago. And, although the "neighbors" in scripture stretch far beyond next door, those found a hop, skip, & a jump away are included as well in the command. Here's a free printable tag to tie around a tin of cookies, a potted plant, or any other new neighbor token you can come up with. Let's start loving our neighbors as ourselves... & remember, it goes beyond your neighborhood to the farthest reaches of the globe!
Click on each printable, right click & save to your computer {or copy & paste},
open in a word document, resize if necessary {I found these need to be shrinked down quite a bit}, print, & love your neighbor!
tags:
bonus art print:
CONDITIONS OF USE FOR PRINTABLES: My printables are free for personal use only. Feel free to share them on Pinterest provided you credit & link back to http://bessbag.blogspot.com/ {Bess' Bag}. If you want to blog about these printables, or share a project you created using them, it would be fabulous, just be sure to credit & link back to http://bessbag.blogspot.com/ {Bess' Bag} (feel free to use 1 or 2 photos, but please don't share the actual printable on your site - just add a link to it). Thanks & enjoy!
Neighborly Love,
-Bess-
