Love Your Neighbor.

Our homeowner's associations (HOA) paid us a visit. Again. For the third time. I mean, the first time was in the form of a direct e-mail about trash on our porch, and the second was in the form of an all HOA (group shaming?) e-mail when we overfilled the dumpster with said trash. And now we had a personal visit about the cleanliness of our vehicles. My first reaction to hearing the recent request was to get defensive. Then I felt embarrassed and ashamed. I don't want to be, "those people." I wanted to be the perfect, never-gets-into-any-type-of-trouble HOA member. But let's be honest. This is the first time we've lived in an area with an HOA, and we aren't the neatest, cleanest, most studious people. But you know what? We signed the HOA agreement. These are our neighbors. God calls us to love them.

Thankfully, my husband received the most recent HOA visit. The person greeted him respectfully, and he responded respectfully. Might the complaint seem petty? To us, yes, but not to them. And you know what? We can love our neighbors by taking care of it. Getting defensive, or griping and complaining does nothing for them, for us, or for our testimony. 

God calls us to be good neighbors. Martin Luther, as cited by Tom Nelson in his book, Work Matters, states that “God does need our good works, but our neighbor does. (p. 123). In this case, our neighbors need us to clean up a bit. It really isn't that hard. 

Cleaning up our property is an issue of personal choice. But so is living in an area with an HOA. And so is choosing to serve God by being good neighbors.

People often cite The Golden Rule when encouraging people to treat others the way they themselves want to be treated. "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt 22:39, NIV) can also mean loving your neighbor enough to respect their own preferences and opinions, though. Hopefully it's obvious that we would not violate God's moral or written law to obey our HOA, but this issue isn't about that. It's an issue of preference. And we're going to take care of it. May the way that we do so honor and glorify our Lord, the one who first loved us.

References:

Barker, K.L. (Ed.) (2008). Zondervan NIV Study Bible. Zondervan.

Nelson, T. (2011). Work matters: Connecting Sunday worship to Monday work. Crossway.

Who Is My Neighbor?

We had a compelling sermon this past week at church. I came away with the question, "Who is my neighbor?" It's a question that's been rattling around in my head for quite some time. I read Bob Goff's book, Everybody Always this summer. And I recently finished Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist. Neither book was entirely about neighbors, but they both referenced love and loving the people around us.

My job is to serve people, and I love it and am thankful for it. It is a privilege to walk with and encourage people in their journeys of life, particularly in the hard times. But I've been realizing that my service during the day can come at a cost to my family and friends during the rest of my life. The work I do always comes at a cost to those around me, because it is emotionally taxing and draining. But sometimes work comes at too much of a cost, where I'm putting work before family and friends.

The question, "Who is my neighbor?" for me, therefore, has become less about the general "who" and more about the specific "who." Shauna Niequist writes about the "home team," and encourages readers to really hone in on who that is. Bob Goff writes times and times again about not trying to be Jesus. Jesus is the Savior and Healer and Redeemer, and I'm not it! I'm realizing that part of my issue with work is that I'm trying to do too much, playing medic for the away team while my home team suffers. I need to do the work I'm called to do, but I also need to make time and space for the direct people in my life, the people who are behind and before me in the work I do. Because if I lose my home team, I've got nothing.

So who is my neighbor? Every human being that God has created is my neighbor! But there are some specific neighbors, my family and my close friends, that God calls me to serve in specific ways, and I need to find time and space to do it. By God's grace, may I never step over the bleeding neighbor at my doorstep to be a "savior" to the neighbor far away.