by Frances Taylor

Created on: August 22, 2009   Last Updated: September 01, 2009

There is probably none of the Biblical commandments as challenging as "love thy neighbor as thyself.'' It's meaning can extend to one's literal neighbor, the person next door, or can be understood to include those across the country and around world.

It is a commandment to be as considerate of your neighbor's circumstance as you would want them to be to yours, a variation of 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you."(Luke 6:31)

While this tenet of faith can be understood in the abstract to love your fellow man, to have concern about the fate of those who may live in places and circumstances far away and different from yours, it is perhaps the hardest to live out with those who are closest at hand.

Those who are your literal neighbors - the ones, who play their music too loud, allow their dog to urinate on your property, block your driveway with their cars - generate more hard feelings than anything else. It's much easier to love a neighbor who watches out for your child, who calls you if they see something suspicious, who offers help during a snowstorm or lets you borrow their lawnmower if yours is broken.

But the commandment applies to both of these neighbors, not just the considerate ones. I have a neighbor who calls the police on the neighborhood kids when they set off fire-crackers on July 4th, who makes anonymous complaints to the town about a neighbors' grass needing to be cut or an old car parked in someone's driveway. This neighbor enjoys setting one person against the other by telling someone in a confidential way what someone else is supposedly saying about them. You get the picture.

Not only do I not love this neighbor, I have caught myself wishing her ill when I am stressed and become fed up with her games. And that is when I stop myself, close my eyes and pray to God to lift the burden of anger away from me. So far, its working.

I also know what its like to experience the love of neighbors who live this commandment in their lives. My grandmother's neighbors took her grocery shopping, removed her snow without being asked, stopped by just to see how she was doing, brought her things they knew she liked.

Years later, after my grandmother had passed away, these neighbors called us in middle of the night to let us know our house, where my aunt lived, was burning to the ground. My aunt has not home and was unharmed. Our neighbors came by to console us over the loss of our childhood home, and to offer whatever help they could.

This commandment can have a far-reaching impact over generations - what those neighbors who have showed love have taught me I have tried to bring with me to other places that I have lived.

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