If your neighbor knocks on your door and tells you they are hurting, that a painful experience is holding them back, that they are really struggling, what is your first instinct? How do you respond?
What if you don’t understand their struggle at all? What if their pain isn’t something you can see? Does that change the way you react to their hurting?
Here’s the thing: it is NOT our job to tell hurting people they have no reason to be hurting.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a post on how we can listen better. Today’s post goes hand-in-hand with that one, because loving is about listening to your neighbor’s pain, even when you don’t understand what they are going through.
For a lot of us, though, our knee-jerk reaction is defensiveness, logic, and rationalization rather than compassionate listening.
If we are going to live out the words of Micah 6:8, “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God,” we have to stop trying to fit everyone else’s experiences into our own perspective. We have to stop denying the experiences of entire groups of people. We have to stop building barriers around ourselves to try to keep out anything that feels contrary to our worldview.
I think many of us are afraid of feeling uncomfortable. We don’t want to open ourselves up to the pain of others because of the feelings it stirs inside of us: confusion, unease, even humiliation.
But if we want to pursue justice, if we want to live in mercy and humility, we have to love with lowered defenses.
So when your neighbor knocks on your door and says she is hurting—even if you can’t see her pain and don’t understand where it could be coming from—open yourself up to that relationship, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Listen to what she says without raising up defenses. Devote yourself to loving her, even if her experiences of the world are way different from your own.
Every person has a story. There is always more to someone than what first meets the eye.
Our world is messy and divided. It’s so much easier to just stick with people who believe the same things as us and share our views of the world. It’s more comfortable.
But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable.
God does not give us spirits of fear and timidity; He gives us power, love, and self-control (2 Timothy 1:7). He gives us courage to step outside of our comfort zones. And sometimes, we have to step out of our comfort zones in order to truly show love to those around us.
We are all humans, created in the image of God. We come from different backgrounds, different experiences, different hopes and dreams, different trials and hardships, different fears and desires.
But love can bridge the gap between those differences IF we are willing to do the work, and get uncomfortable, and listen, and lower our defenses.
The way we choose to respond to the brokenness in this world is up to us, friends. We can be the hands and feet of Jesus to hurting communities—or we can sit back and pretend that people can only really be hurting if we have experienced that same pain ourselves.
Let’s try to act justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
And never forget… you are onederfully created.
Love,
Becca
