{"id":7631,"date":"2021-10-21T09:57:53","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T16:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/?p=7631"},"modified":"2021-10-21T09:57:53","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T16:57:53","slug":"thoughtful-thursday-love-your-neighbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/2021\/10\/21\/thoughtful-thursday-love-your-neighbor\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughtful Thursday: Love Your Neighbor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ted&#8217;s sermon last week has had me thinking about people being created in God&#8217;s image (even the ones that are not easy to like) which this week&#8217;s\u00a0verses reinforce.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Matthew+22%3A34-40&amp;version=NRSV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Matthew 22:34-40<\/a>.\u00a0<strong><sup>34\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,\u00a0<strong><sup><span id=\"en-NRSV-23906\">35\u00a0<\/span><\/sup><\/strong><span id=\"en-NRSV-23906\">and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.\u00a0<\/span><strong><sup><span id=\"en-NRSV-23907\">36\u00a0<\/span><\/sup><\/strong><span id=\"en-NRSV-23907\">\u201cTeacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><strong><sup><span id=\"en-NRSV-23908\">37\u00a0<\/span><\/sup><\/strong><span id=\"en-NRSV-23908\">He said to him, \u201c\u2018You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><strong><sup><span id=\"en-NRSV-23909\">38\u00a0<\/span><\/sup><\/strong><span id=\"en-NRSV-23909\">This is the greatest and first commandment.\u00a0<\/span><strong><sup><span id=\"en-NRSV-23910\">39\u00a0<\/span><\/sup><\/strong><span id=\"en-NRSV-23910\">And a second is like it: \u2018You shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><strong><sup><span id=\"en-NRSV-23911\">40\u00a0<\/span><\/sup><\/strong><span id=\"en-NRSV-23911\">On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to love people from a distance but it requires an investment of time, energy, and attention to really get to know someone. Initially we tend to build up and see the parts of a person we like (or don\u2019t like) but it requires grace, compassion, patience, and maturity to truly love another person. This makes the people closest to us much more difficult to deal with than people we idealize, but God values us, the real us, more than any idealized version of people we make up in our head. It is so important that he places it second only to loving him.<\/p>\n<p>This week, consider how much time you give to the people in your life; The people whose lives you can make a genuine difference in. Then, make that call, run that errand, take that lunch, write that note or do whatever it is that God directs you to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ted&#8217;s sermon last week has had me thinking about people being created in God&#8217;s image (even the ones that are not easy to like) which this week&#8217;s\u00a0verses reinforce. Matthew 22:34-40.\u00a034\u00a0When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,\u00a035\u00a0and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.\u00a036\u00a0\u201cTeacher, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":7632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,113,294],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-news","category-newsletters","category-thoughtful-thursday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7633,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7631\/revisions\/7633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}