After standing for a few minutes in a crowded place a woman confided to the friend who joined her, "I've been watching the people as they passed by in the street and I must admit I find many of them quite unattractive. An hour ago I might have said that I love all mankind, but now I have doubts."
Many normally friendly men and women confess to having difficulty in loving—or even in kindly tolerating—certain people. Such an admission can be disturbing to followers of Christ Jesus who know that the Master advocated universal love. They remember he approved a lawyer's assertion that the way to inherit eternal life is to obey the law that insists, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."Luke 10:27;
Jesus then brought it home in his parable of the good Samaritan that our neighbors are as much the people in the street who show signs of having been dealt with hardly by the cruel, abrasive conditions of the mortal world, as the kindly friends who live comfortably next door and are always ready to help out with a cup of sugar or by minding the children.
