Sunday, September 12: Who will your neighbor in heaven be?

If you ask any Christian to tell you about the greatest pain they have experienced in their Christian walk, most stories will involve an event that occurred at church, at the hand of a fellow believer. We expect to be hurt by non-believers, but can be blindsided by the ones we share the deepest love with. Does this go conjointly with the philosophy that “you only hurt the ones you love?” Though we are called by God to love others, including our enemies, most would say that we are not called to like everyone else. Yet truthfully, if God has chosen another for His kingdom, why do we struggle in sharing the kingdom with them? Are we planning on asking for a mansion in a different neighborhood of heaven if God places them next door? Though heaven is a gated community, the point isn’t to separate the neighbors! What if God decided to surround us in heaven with the people we couldn’t learn to love while we were here? Just as Jonah had the people of Nineveh, most of us have people we don’t click with easily. But who said it was supposed to be easy?


Jesus did not give us the easy way out. Even in situations where we feel ethical or moral superiority, we still are called to forgive, and to do that continuously.


21 Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.
Matthew 18:21-22

Forgiveness is the release of a debt. In order to forgive a brother, we must get to the place in our hearts where we no longer feel they owe us anything. God places the burden securely on our backs when he shares this analogy with us:


But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
Mark 11:26


It is easy to get high-handed when noticing the shortcomings of others, yet the smelling salts that bring us back to consciousness typically involves self-reflection. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” comes to mind, as we are all sinners, saved by grace. Is it time in your life to release a burden? One of the greatest gifts of forgiveness is that it not only frees the person being forgiven, but it also frees the one forgiving. Let go and let God! When a fisherman releases his catch, the fish swims with such exuberance when freed. Release someone today, and God will release you!


Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13