I suppose that really ought to be “whom”, but be that as it may.

There is a significant dynamic in the Christian life. God loves us, and in order to receive that love we must pass it along to others. In fact, loving others increases our capacity for receiving God’s love; so not only must we love our neighbors as ourselves, but in loving our neighbors we are loving ourselves.

So who are our neighbors, and how do we love them?

First, there are those we know personally, and those we don’t. Those we know personally–our family, our friends, our co-workers–can be the easiest and that hardest to love. Easiest because they are right there, in front of us, and hardest because their faults are also right there in front of us. Of those we don’t, there are again two categories: those we see, and those we don’t see.

Those we don’t see are those in other towns, in other states, in other countries. These are generally quite easy to love: write a check, drop it in the mail. Say a blanket prayer for disaster victims in Myanmar. The check must represent hard-earned money, but writing and mailing it is pretty quick, and I don’t even need to leave my house. Saying a quick prayer is even easier.

The hard ones are the ones we see but don’t know: the hordes of people we see at the movie theater or the shopping mall or walking down the street. We don’t know them. We don’t know what they need. Most of them are not obviously hungry, or sick, or in need of alms-giving. There’s probably nothing they want our help with, and they’d be surprised and dismayed if we offered. (Try accosting someone at the mall, and asking them if there’s anything you can do for them. How would you react?)

How can we love them, in more than an abstract and theoretical sense? How can we let them know that it isn’t our own love we are offering, but God’s?

I can think of all sorts of things that won’t work. Is there anything that will?