It Is All Very Near To You

From today’s reading…

We look endlessly for the easy button but mock, ridicule, or ignore the simple button in business, sports, relationships, and our faith.

When Hurricane Harvey hit my adopted hometown of Houston I flew out for eight days to help.

During my time there I was moved with how many people came from literally around the country and around the world to help.

I was also moved with how many of the 6,997,384 residents of the Houston metro area…didn’t lift a finger for their neighbors.

No kidding, just three blocks from where I launched watercraft into flooded neighborhoods to help business owners check on their offices, high school classmates retrieve important papers from their homes, and even a reservist get to his apartment to get his uniform so he could report to duty, were people mowing their lawns and sipping sweet tea on their front patios like it was a normal, lazy summer day.

I had to buy a plane ticket, drive an hour to the airport, fly 2.5 hours into Austin because Houston airports were shut down, borrow a truck and two jet skis, then drive hours through flooded roads alone at night to be in a position to help the rest of the week.

Here was an obvious, simple opportunity to help not as an outsider or foreigner as the good Samaritan did in today’s Gospel, but as a the real neighbors that they were. And literally millions chose not to lift a finger.

How many of those, however, send money to help impoverished people in foreign lands or go on mission trips themselves to dig wells in faraway villages or bring medical supplies to third world countries?

While those actions are commendable, why do we ignore the opportunities to help our literal neighbors?

Are we afraid to look those in need in the eye?

Are we afraid we’ll be taken advantage of?

Are we afraid to learn that we’re actually called to actually love our actual neighbors?

We’re called to love and help those “very near to you.”

This means performing more than five days of charity once every five years in another hemisphere.

On the downside you you won’t be able to take lots of selfies in those faraway places and make inspired, moving, contemplative social media posts to prove how woke and loving and caring you are, but you will be moved as you move more others and help them…

Stay the course. Keep the faith. Endure.