Friday, December 7, 2018

Are You My Neighbor?


INVITATION: 

As we begin the second week of Advent (those four weeks leading up to Christmas), I will be offering some personal insights into my family's practice of Advent and how to put the meaning back in Christmas! 

I hope you will grab a few friends and join me for my Advent talk at Holy Redeemer Church in Burton, Michigan on Monday, December 10th at 6:30 a.m.

I look forward to seeing you there!

**** 
Are You My Neighbor?

I was reading this sweet little article in my Reader’s Digest Magazine about neighbors, and it reminded me of our neighbors when we were first married.

George and Grace lived across the street and he loved to feed peanuts to the squirrels.

Martha lived alone after her husband died and enjoyed putting my kids’ kindergarten artwork on her fridge.

Don and Clare never fussed about our kids rolling down the little hill into their yard; when they went to Ireland they thought of us and brought back special gifts.

Mr. Winters would arrive at my door with the biggest tomato, squished from having been dropped—not to give it to me, but to proudly show it to me.

The neighbors we had growing up were wonderful, too, and I greatly cherish those lifelong friendships as well.  There is something unique about neighbors that become friends.

When we first moved into our current house, I visited our backyard neighbor and introduced myself.  Both young mothers at the time, we have shared family events and our children’s milestones.

You see the thing about neighbors is that they can be real treasures to be cherished.  It always saddens me when I read articles about neighbors fighting over lawns and putting up fences.

We did have a couple of neighbors growing up who had a fit when our kickball accidentally went on their lawn, and now I wonder why.  We lived in an active neighborhood where we played hide-and-seek at night across many lawns, hiding in bushes and behind garages.  We played kick-the-can and kickball in the street as well, giving way to the occasional wild kick which would send a ball flying onto a nearby lawn.

Maybe when you spend time grooming your lawn, you get protective of it.

That could be a good metaphor for faith and life, when you think about it.

Have you created clean borders, edges around your life that others are afraid to breach, lest they get rebuked?

Are you so protective and unwilling to be vulnerable, that you have closed yourself off from others?  Are others kept out of those private spaces where they might be able to help you?

And when it comes to your faith, is it tied up in a neat package that is not available to others?  Is your life so carefully trimmed that there is no room for messiness, only perfection? 

I don’t sense that being ultra-protective was the way Jesus lived.  In fact, one could argue that the things he said and did opened him up to ridicule and subjected him to legal threats and popular criticisms.  He seems to have been a living example of vulnerability.

Why?  Because he knew that loving others comes at a cost, and that must be personal.  Domestic abuse situations aside, a healthy vulnerability is not weakness, but strength in the face of assaults on morality or our faith convictions.

A life that spills out into the open doesn’t really leave any room for fear in the wake of vulnerability, but one that is closed off and protective simply becomes rigid and unkind.

True sacrificial love, where we give of ourselves so completely that we risk temptations and criticisms, is really the only love worth offering.  

 Anything less results in grooming a life unlived.

Janet Cassidy
Janetcassidy.com

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