Neighboring and who we are in Christ

A few nights ago Sam and I bundled up (one of us using Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer finger puppets as a glove—pick your battles, they tell me), and set out to deliver some Christmas gifts to the houses on our street.

It was nothing fancy—a bag of cinnamon sugar popcorn and some gingerbread cookies made and decorated by the boys. A cheery, masked hello and a few minutes of conversation about the baby coming or their Christmas plans, or letting her know we’re praying for a healthier year ahead for her wife, or asking how they’re settling into the neighborhood, or letting them know we loved seeing their maple turn red this fall.

2020 has been a weird year for neighboring. In January, I had goals, people—GOALS! There were going to be impromptu dinners. Invitations to come watch March Madness in the spring. A chili potluck in the fall. I was going to know the name of every person on our street by the end of the year.

And instead there were drawings and messages of encouragement on our driveway in sidewalk chalk. Texts before trips to the grocery store to see if anyone needs anything. And, truth be told, long weeks of little to no face-to-face contact at all.  It’s not at all been the “faithful presence” on our street that we had imagined, and there’s been some grief to that.

I read something on Instagram this week about “behaving as though ‘neighbor’ is part of our spiritual identity,” and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

The truth that, in Christ, he declares me a “neighbor” makes the command to love my neighbor as myself feel less like a burden or a challenge to master or a goal that needs my hustle, and more like a participation in what the Spirit is already doing in me and among his people, an invitation into the stringing together of small acts of love for others and allegiance to our King that somehow are both a means of his grace and the renewal of all things. 

I wonder, how has giving and receiving from this facet of our identity in Christ brought beauty or hope or light or healing or fun or joy into your life or community this year?  Here on the darkest day of the year (and the day the traditional Advent “O Antiphons” lead us to call upon the coming Christ as “Oriens” or “Dayspring”), I find this especially worth considering.