Helping Where You Can (Friday Devotional)

 

He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

- Matthew 22:37-39

Tuesday night, my intention was to stay up late watching the election returns like most of the country. I had done my civic duty by voting early that morning, so all that was left to do was watch, wait, and pray.

But my plans were rudely disturbed when I got home from an evening committee meeting and learned that one of my kids had vomited twice since I’d been gone and still wasn’t feeling good. When I went to bed, the election results still uncertain, Lindsey and I were awakened by the news that he’d gotten sick again. Just a couple hours later, our daughter joined the fun, announcing in imitable fashion to us—and our bathroom floor—that she was sick too.

In total, we were awakened four times over the course of that long Tuesday night, and election anxiety (mostly) gave way to the tangible work of cleaning floors and soothing children. By the time the sun rose on Wednesday morning, I had learned two things: Donald Trump had been elected President of the United States and two of my kids were sick.

There’s an old expression that all politics is local, meaning that real change starts at city hall, not in Washington D.C. That proverb has seemed to fall by the wayside over the last decade, as partisanship reached a fever pitch and the culture wars became a fire threatening to consume everything from the school board to the church house. Lately it seems more like all politics is national, like you can’t do any good without first passing a partisan purity test.

But my kids offered me a visceral reminder on Tuesday night—as important as national issues are, your most immediate opportunities to make the country a better place are right in front of you. They’re in your neighborhood, not the capital. They’re in the halls of your local elementary school, not the halls of power. They’re in your house, not the White House.

Voting is important. Campaigns and elections and legislation matter; representative democracy is something we ought to hold dear and take seriously. But even more important is the simple, divine command to love your neighbor as yourself.

So do the small, important things to show people the love of God. Bake the casserole for your new neighbor. Call the elderly widow down the street. Offer free babysitting for the single mom in your church. For when you do these things—the kind, neighborly, Christlike things—you’re making the country a better place.