“And who is my neighbor?” That question posed by a scholar of the law to Jesus resonates throughout the ages. The story of the Bible tells of an ever expanding answer to that question. Jesus says in Matthew 24:14 that all the nations are meant to hear the gospel … which is to say that all nations are meant to be brother and sister and mother to me. In our age of instant communication and rapid transportation this message takes on new urgency. The natural tendency to hunker down and limit our caring to “our own” must be resisted since there isn’t anyone out there who isn’t one of God’s own and hence one of our own. There are no strangers, only friends we haven’t met yet.
