We All Need Somebody To Lean On

The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”  Mark 12:31 NASB

Neighbors.  We have some good ones.  Always so caring and generous and kind.  The Bible has a lot to say about neighbors.  In fact, The Parable of the Good Samaritan, is an answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?"  It is easy to put limits on who our neighbor is and it is easy to provide a multitude of excuses for why this person cannot be considered our neighbor.  Jesus cleared it up by saying that our neighbor is anyone in our proximity with whom we can share the love of God.

I'm sure you can think of examples of when you've experienced someone being a good neighbor.  I'm thinking of two examples with a farming context that come to mind that I can share.

When I was farming with my Dad back in the year 2000, times were tough - input costs of the crop were sky high and prices for your harvested crop were low.  People were in a pinch.  I remember as a grown man crying in my crawfish boat, wondering how the bills were going to get paid?  How was I going to support my family?  It was hard for everyone.

But there was a certain brotherhood in farming.  If a tractor broke down, well, you'd drive to your neighboring farmer's shop and borrow his.  If you were stuck in the mud, you'd flag down the farmer down the road and he'd come with a tractor and a chain and pull you out.  Harvest time was always a little stressful.  The crop was ripening in the field and bad weather sets in, bringing the harvest to a halt.  A combine breaks and requires major work that sets you behind.  What to do?

At about 11 AM when the dew had burned off the rice, you'd look down the road and here comes the neighboring farmer in his combine, with his workers driving a tractor and cart and truck following close behind.  They would give you a day's work or whatever it took to get you out of a bind.  They wouldn't accept pay.  At the end of the day, you'd fill their tanks with diesel and they'd drive off into the sunset like the hero with the white hat.  It was a sacrifice of their time, their money, their labor, but they did it because they were honorable men that had great love for their neighbor.  You'd do the same for them, too, and when the opportunity arose, you did.

I remember I was renting a farm a little south of Oberlin.  Dad was helping me get my crop in.  A terrible storm arose and lightning struck my Dad's combine in the field while he was sitting in it.  A scary situation, for sure.  As I recall, the cab filled with electrical smoke and it fried the circuit boards in the electronics, requiring expensive and time consuming repairs.  Lots of things were going wrong.  We were falling behind.

My brother-in-law's Dad farmed south of Kinder, easily ten miles away.  He heard of our plight and drove his combine on a busy road ten miles up Highway 165 to come help me.  It put a big lump in my throat when I saw that John Deere turning down the dirt road to come help us.  How do you repay that kind of service?  The words, "Thank you," seem so lacking, so trivial, so useless in such times.  The recipient of something like that (I'm speaking from experience), feels so ill-equipped even to respond.  The fact that I'm remembering these examples two and a half decades later speaks volumes about the impact that neighbors have had on my life.  It's things you never ever forget.

The fact of the matter is neighbors don't do things for neighbors for a thank you or for a full tank of diesel or a plate lunch or a cold Dr. Pepper.  It's an expression of love, of selfless service to a fellow human being.  It's lending a helping hand to someone who needs it.  Taking responsibility for the well-being of another and living out the words of Christ, loving your neighbor as yourself.  I have had a lot of people in my life that have modeled that type of behavior.  Giants, in my eyes.  I hope to be able to live up to their example.