Loving your Neighbor – and living as Christ's Body

It’s easy in the States to stay in our own houses and live our own separate lives. We have everything we “need” right in the walls of our home. We drive to Meijer or Walmart, Food Lion or Kroger, to get our groceries, then go home. We have exercise machinery in our basements, cable TV, and internet at the touch of a button.

I’m not saying that these things are inherently bad. Not at all! I’ve wished enough times since August that I had internet, or Meijer, or an elliptical machine readily available to me! But I am also realizing how not having all we need can make us dependent on others in a good way. For example, I’ve gotten to know several teachers at HOPAC better simply through their generosity in offering us rides to Shoppers (one of the few grocery “stores”) or to church. The mercy and love, and absolute willingness to be flexible with your schedule and time to help out your neighbor in so many ways, is amazing.

Our next-door neighbors have a problem with their luku (electricity) box, where their electricity flips on and off minute by minute, or sometimes second by second. On, off. On off on. Imagine the click each time it switches, and your lights flicking on and off. So when it comes time for their teens to do homework at night, they come over to our house and hang out. Some nights, it means having them over to watch a movie. Or letting them recharge their computers, phones, and flashlights. Then, on Wednesday evenings and Sundays, when our power is cut due to a shortage (not enough rain to power the city’s electricity)… we can head over to one of our neighbor’s houses who have a gas stove to do our cooking.

With the everyday small struggles, we learn to depend on people outside ourselves. I’ve had more adventures and laughs with my housemate Marie on dala dalas (buses) trying to get places than anywhere else! Getting into a small space where you have to stand up (no more seats) and are being jolted around and nearly onto the laps of Muslim men as you stop and go, then having 10 more people cram on after you, makes you reconsider your need for personal space! While these adventures are often exhausting, and while depending on others so much is somewhat “uncomfortable” and outside the norm according to what I’m used to in the States, it is refreshing to be thrown out of my comfort zone sometimes as well. And while I would have loved to have come “home” after my trip to Uganda with lights, a working water heater, and a water pump (I forgot it was a Wed evening…), I am thankful for the realization that there are people all around me who are willing to help me out as needed. It makes me thankful for the little things (such as a headlamp, a battery-operated fan, a bed, and some slightly melted ice in the freezer), and makes me rethink a lifestyle where I can be so self-sufficient that I don’t need to know my neighbor unless I really want to.

I’ve started to realize it’s a two-way street – and that, in many ways, if we don’t depend on each other, we might survive… but will never truly thrive. Maybe this is what God meant, in some small way, when He said that we are the Body of Christ. In the physical, as well as in the Spiritual, we need each other – and were never meant to be “alone.”