Monday
LUKE 10:25-28
- Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. Read the text until you can understand what it says. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.
- “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. The correct understanding of God’s Law is indeed ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Think of God in terms of his attributes, for example love, or just, or righteous. If you are to love him with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, how will that affect you? And your attitude towards your fellow man?
- If you were to make this your principle of life—“love your neighbour as yourself”—how will that change you?
- Think of all that are important aspects of being a Christian—the things you should know, the things you should do—how do they measure against the command to “love your neighbour as yourself”?
- Write down a prayer in response.
Tuesday
LUKE 10:25-28
- Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.
- Read the passage. Review the answers/thoughts you wrote down yesterday. Is there anything that you need to respond to?
- Review the past day. What concerns/joys/events occupy your heart?
- Write down a prayer in response.
Wednesday
LUKE 10:29-37
- Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. Read the text until you can understand what it says. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.
- In the story, Jesus deliberately had religious leaders, a Priest and a Levite, and a religious outcast, a Samaritan, as his central characters. What is the point he is making in choosing these characters? Why did Jesus choose to make the Samaritan the hero in this story?
- The religion of the man who was attacked was not mentioned. Why?
- “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man?”
The question posed by the lawyer was “who is my neighbour”? The question Jesus asked was “who was a neighbour”? What was the point Jesus made?
- Notice that in the end, Jesus emphasised “being a neighbour” in the context of understanding how to apply “love your neighbour as yourself”. What kind of person would be a neighbour in the story where convenience, time, stranger, religion, money, danger, involvement are perhaps factors to be considered?
- Write down a prayer in response.
Thursday
LUKE 10:29-37
- Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.
- Read the passage. Review the answers/thoughts you wrote down yesterday. Is there anything that you need to respond to?
- Review the past day. What concerns/joys/events occupy your heart?
- Write down a prayer in response.
Friday
LUKE 10:25-37
- Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. Read the text until you can understand what it says. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.
- “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
There is a gap between knowing and doing. Jesus very pointedly emphasised doing. How do you rate yourself as a Christian in terms of 1) knowing and 2) doing?
- Most Christian activities help you to know. And often we fool ourselves thinking that knowing is enough. Jesus says otherwise. What can you do to make sure that you also do?
- Write down a prayer in response.
Saturday
LUKE 10:25-37
- Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.
- Read the passage. Review the answers/thoughts you wrote down yesterday. Is there anything that you need to respond to?
- Review the past day. What concerns/joys/events occupy your heart?
- Write down a prayer in response.
Sunday
BECOMING A NEIGHBOUR
What must I do to inherit eternal life? The lawyer wants to know. What is at the core of God’s law? Jesus asked. Love all of God with all of yourself. And, with great insight, he adds, and love your neighbour as yourself. This he did not understand, or more probably, culturally it is hard for him to accept. Who is my neighbour? Jesus’ answer, in the telling of the story of the good samaritan, is that in truth if you are a neighbour, then you don’t need to know who is your neighbour.
But how are you a neighbour? How are you the one who is moved by compassion above all else? Surely it is when you love God with your whole being.
There is a dynamic between the first and second command. This is perhaps why when Jesus spoke of the core of God’s law, it came out as a pair: love God, love your neighbour as yourself. In acts of love towards your neighbour, you love God, and in worshiping and adoring God, you become more selfless and more disposed to consider the needs of others.
But the final clause, “as yourself”, is also revealing. You learn to love others by understanding how you need to be loved. But also, you are not called upon to love others by making yourself worthless. Becoming a neighbour is not becoming nothing, or becoming a doormat.
But the crux, as Jesus emphasised, is in becoming. You do not become by knowing. You become by doing and as the story warns us, you also become by not doing. Go and do likewise. A command we do well to obey.
- Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.
- Review the passages of Scripture, and the answers/thoughts you wrote down in the past week. What conclusion can you draw from the passages of Scripture you have been considering? Is there anything that you need to respond to?
- Read the short sharing above. Does it add anything to your conclusion?
- Review the past week. What concerns/joys/events occupy your heart?
- Write down a prayer in response.