Is it easy to love our neighbours?

We’ve been reading the Sermon on the Mount around the dinner table, and it’s made for great discussion and interesting questions. (“Dad, why would someone want my tooth?”) Recently, we were talking about the issues Jesus raises concerning loving your neighbours and praying for those who persecute you. The discussion went something like this:

“Well, it’s easy to love your neighbours isn’t it.” “Yes, Dad.” “And loving those who persecute you would be very difficult, wouldn’t it.” “Yes, Dad.” “So maybe we should pray that we should love those who might persecute us in the future.” “Okay, Dad...”

Little was I to know that in just a couple of days, this passage would be brought to my attention—but not in the way I expected! We’ve now been in Monterrey for several weeks, and after much running around, haggling and general mucking about, I’ve managed to buy a car. I ended up buying a used car from a dealer. Of course, as I drove it out of the yard, it was beautiful and clean, and it had sparkling black tyres and that fake ‘new car smell’. I drove directly from the yard to the house we are renting where I was meeting the owner and signing the contract. I managed to drive the 20 minutes or so without incident, despite driving on the wrong side of the road with the steering wheel being on the wrong side of the car (‘wrong’ from an Australian perspective, that is!) I was having a nice chat in sign language with the owner (language school had only been going for four days, and it was hard to work a colour or a plate of tortillas into the conversation) when outside we heard a crunch! We went outside to find one of my new neighbours walking the street, trying to find the person whose car he had just run into. He found me! Could this be some sort of record? I had owned the car for about 30 minutes, and someone had run into me! My words around the dinner table came back to haunt me: “It’s easy to love your neighbours isn’t it?” (“Yes, Dad... isn’t it, Dad!”) The poor guy—he was really embarrassed and apologetic. Fortunately, the damage wasn’t great, and I think God allowed me to say to myself, “My relationship with this guy is more important than a scratch and a wonky number plate”. So we had a bit of a laugh and shook hands, and both looked forward to being neighbours when we moved in.