Love Your Neighbor 2

Psalm 122:6-9

At the end of last year I asked a member of the church to serve on the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee, an important leadership team in the church. When he came to the first meeting he asked, “Is this where all the screaming and yelling happens?”

He was joking, but unfortunately many groups and teams in churches have a reputation of being the place where screaming and yelling happens. As we work together to build our church, as we plan for the future and try to establish good direction for our ministries we can sometimes get caught up in our own desires and lose sight of the overall picture. We can fail to see that we are all believers, we are all children of God, we are all loved by God, and we should love one another.

Psalm 122 was written specifically about Jerusalem – the holy city of God – and the Temple – the place of worship. But the words of the psalm could apply to any place of worship. What should we do? What should we desire? Who will benefit by this peace and security?

Our place of worship should be a place of peace and love. But it is not always that way. We fall into arguments and disagreements with our Christian brothers and sisters. We may have strained relationships over differing opinions. But we need to learn to think less of ourselves and more of others.

For the sake of all who worship with us we need to seek peace within the walls of our church. For the sake of God’s kingdom we need to seek the prosperity of the house of God. We need to work to be a great church, and that is founded on love for all and peace between us.

Perhaps we will never be able to truly love our enemies when it comes to those who are enemies of our nation and culture. But we should work to at least begin loving others. We can begin with those we already know locally. We can begin by loving those with whom we have issues in our own church and our own community.

DAILY CHALLENGE: Think of the people in your everyday life, especially those in your place of worship. Pray for one person with whom you have “issues,” then pray that you will learn to love them.