Monday, December 7, 2009

Love your Neighbor?

So the Bible says in Leviticus 19: 18....


Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

So I'm wondering if I have to take that literally...Do I really have to love my neighbor? Of course I know the answer to that but for me to love my neighbor will take a lot of help from the big guy from who these words came from.

We moved into our house a little over a year ago and our neighbor has given us the impression time & time again that he doesn't like us. Our house has been a rental so I think they have had quite a few people in and out over the years so maybe he thinks we will be the same way. Sorry we are here to stay. Another neighbor says he doesn't like kids, again sorry we have 4 of them. We have walked on egg shells, been overly nice, kept our kids quiet if we are outside at the same time, always wave when we see them, we especially Kevin have went above and beyond. He once returned Kevin's wave with a groan and an eye roll. They once accused our cat of stealing one of their Koi fish from their pond in their backyard. Isn't it funny that the night of this said incident our cat was resting comfortably downstairs on Liv's bed and he doesn't have claws. Oh and I'm sure it couldn't be one of the many raccoons we have running a muck in the neighborhood after dark. So I'm writing this today because of the snow. There were a few days last winter that I scooped the sidewalk clear to their driveway while they were at work so that he didn't have to do it when he got home. Was I kissing up? DEFINITELY! I thought maybe it would show him that we were nice people. So this morning after I took the kids to school I noticed he had already been up and used his snow blower on his driveway and on the sidewalk in front of his house and all the way to the driveway to the neighbor on the other side of him. However he made a definite stop on our property line with a big pile of his snow blown on to our sidewalk. So when I went out to scoop I had a little extra! : ) How thoughtful!

So all this to say I have a hard time loving him. So I will ask God to help me forgive him and ask him for encouragement to keep on trying to be a GREAT neighbor to Mr. Scrooge.


1 comment:

Kim said...

Bummer! I hope it gets better!