PRAYER PRACTICE
Spoken Prayer – Out loud, pray
for God to speak to you through your reading. Praise God for giving us His
word. Ask the Spirit to help you read with faith, and to live out what you hear
from God through the passage.
DAILY READING
DEVOTION / REFLECTION
Love Your Neighbor as Yourself
by Tom Richards
Wow, there is a lot of ground covered
in today’s reading! I would like to
focus on Jesus’ interaction with an “expert in the law” and the story of the
Good Samaritan found in verses 25-37.
The “expert in the law” tries to test
Jesus (have we seen this before?) by asking “what
must I do to inherit eternal life?” Like he so often does under these circumstances, Jesus responds with a
question, “what is written in the law,
and how do you read it?” The “expert
in the law” answers by saying “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.”
The first
part of this response comes from Deuteronomy 6:5 and the second part from
Leviticus 19:18. Both of these verses
would have been familiar to the Jews in Jesus’ time. This is a great answer, but the “expert in
the law” wanting to justify himself asked Jesus “who is my neighbor?” and the familiar story of the Good Samaritan
follows.
The
initial response of the “expert in the law” is one that Jesus used
himself. We can see this in Matthew
22:35-40 and Mark 12:28-32. In each case
it is interesting (and humbling) to note that the reference to heart, soul, strength
and mind is a call to complete devotion. And, the Greek word for love in these verses is agapao which is the verb form of the more familiar noun agape. It calls for action. Some definitions
of these words include:
- A deliberate
striving for another’s highest good, and is demonstrated through action
- To love
unconditionally and sacrificially.
- 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 gives a great definition!
Reflect - I would ask you to think about these verses as you read or simply remember the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus really makes his point to the “expert in the law” and to us in this parable! In a world that is more divided than I can ever recall, how easy it is to act like the priest and the Levite when it comes to my “neighbors” – all of my “neighbors”.
