To Go and Do Likewise

God's greatest commandment is LOVE.

To love our neighbors. 

Sure - the family who lives next to me is really nice. I can love them. No problem. 
Except that's not what God means. 
OK, I can also love people who look like me, think the same way as me. They're my neighbors, too!
But God wants love to extend to more people than that. In the story of the Good Samaritan, the neighbor, the one who had mercy on and helped the man who was hurt, is the Samaritan ... the other ... the person looked down upon by society... the foreigner ... the unclean ... the unwanted.

The other. The refugee. The illegal immigrant. The LGBTQ+ person. The mentally ill. The disabled. The Jew. The Muslim. The liberal. The conservative. The inmate. The poor. The rich. The vulnerable. The person who has a different color skin than you, whose political views differ from your own, whose religious beliefs clash with yours. The child. 

God calls us to love them all, not love them except.

And besides, who can argue with loving a child? 

What about children ripped away from their parents due to their parents' immigration status? What about those children? No matter what your views on illegal immigrants, is it love - is it obeying God's command - to separate a child from their parent, regardless of the unfathomable damage done to the child in doing so? 

Too many people who claim to be Christians have infested social media with comments in the vein of, "If you don't want to have your child taken from you, don't enter this country illegally." This completely disregards the children and what is happening to them after they're taken from the love and comfort they've always known. Irreparable harm is being done to these children. 

What is being done to these families isn't love and in no way reflects Christian values or morals. Everything about this goes against what God calls us to do. 

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Luke 10: 36-37

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Today, I intend... 

... to go and do likewise. 
... to have mercy on those who are different from me.
... to be a neighbor to all people.
... to work toward justice for those in need.
... to live God's love.