The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Luke 10:29
Most of us have neighbors that live nearby. Can you close your eyes right now and imagine their faces?
A journalist interviewed people who had participated in a genocide. “He spoke to one man who had murdered his neighbor of many years. ‘At that fatal instant I did not see in him what he had been before,’ the man recalled. His neighbor’s face had become blurry in the seconds before the machete swung. ‘His features were indeed similar to those of the person I knew, but nothing firmly reminded me that I had lived beside him for a long time.’ This man literally did not see.”[1]
The Bible says we have a spiritual enemy who doesn’t want us to see people. He doesn’t want us to see them the way God sees and values them. When God created people He said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26a NIV). To be created in God’s image means every person reflects God’s nature, carries God-given worth—so each life is seen, valued, and treated with honor.
A rich man who didn’t want to see the needy people around him once came to Jesus. The man admitted he knew he was supposed to love others as much as he loved himself but that would require action. Scripture says, “The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (Luke 10:29). Jesus’s answer was clear: your neighbor is the person in need right in front of you.
Your invitation today is simple: Ask God for open eyes to see like He does and the courage to act.
[1] David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (New York: Random House, 2023), chap. 8, “The Epidemic of Blindness,” Kindle edition.
