One evening, Duke Hammond (the president of 6:8), shared a little Bible nugget to the group. In part of his talk, he touched on the Greatest Commandment.
Mark 12:30-31 (NIV)
30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Love God. Love your neighbor.
Duke went on to share a little experiment they did with one of the teams. Each member of the team was given a picture of a tico (the common name for a Costa Rican) with nothing more than what part of Alajuelita they were from.
No name, just a picture. The task was to find the person.
What the team found out was that everybody in Alajuelita knows their neighbor. Every team member found their assigned person by simply showing the picture to people in the community.
Eventually someone would lead them to where the person lived.
I live in a townhouse with a total of eight connected units. Show me a picture of the person who lives at the other end of my building (less than a 10 second walk away) and I wouldn’t know their name. In fact, I wouldn’t even recognize their face.
How can you love your neighbor, let alone express that love without at least knowing their name?
This little nugget came alive and started to resonate within my spirit later on in the week with a woman named Serena whose story I will share in a future post.
It is a testimony to the power of knowing your neighbors.
Here are the eight people in my building.
- me
- Missy
- Neighbor 2
- Neighbor 3
- Neighbor 4
- Neighbor 5
- Neighbor 6
- Neighbor 7
I hope to fill in the missing names soon.