Love Your Neighbor

A couple hours ago, the Dallas area was hit by some pretty crazy weather.

Now, it’s not unusual for us to get the annual ridiculous downpours, flash flood warnings, and tornado watches; as the word “annual” implies, we have basically gotten used to it. Telling my brother to calm down. Telling my sister to stop freaking out. No, we don’t have a basement. Sit down and eat your dinner.

This year, though, I was scrolling through Facebook for the twelve-hundredth time (thanks, winter break), and I saw my friend’s mom (don’t ask why we’re friends shh) post that their house had been “demolished.” What!?

Frantically, I snapchatted (yes it’s a verb) my friend and asked if he was okay. Turns out, everyone in the house was fine, but the house was destroyed. Wrecked. Completely. Honestly, I wanted to be there. I wanted to see how I could help. I wanted to support a friend in need. Unfortunately, our houses are far apart, the rain was still going, and I leave for St. Louis tomorrow, but wow.

Call me naive, but I think I finally realized that every single one of these annual storms has broken homes, ruined belongings, and devastated lives. For those people, and my friend’s family, it’s not just “another storm.” It’s real.

God calls us to love our neighbors as He has loved us. God calls us to be a community for each other. God calls us to care, not because it makes us good people or gives us street cred or bonus points in heaven, but because He did. He loved first. He has saved. But how do we love if we can’t be there for people? I really had no way of being there physically for my friend tonight, and I know there are hundreds of other people that were impacted, too. How do we love?

What I really want to take away from this is the fact that we can’t always be there to help the people we care about. We can always pray and trust that God will be there, but we can’t always be present. Instead, all we can do is take every opportunity we have that we can do something about to help. To be active. To speak up. To be present. If everyone took time to help and love the people in their neighborhood, we wouldn’t have to worry about the people we can’t get to.

PS: Also, thought of an app idea (that may or may not be horrible) — what if we had a social media-type app that was essentially a platform for asking for and providing love. If a tornado destroys your house, you just have to post and say “I need house repair help” or “my dog ran away.” People in the area can log on and see who needs what help, and everyone can leverage their own resources and abilities to reach out and help. Communities can grow based off common help-interests, like “construction” or “animals/pets” or “healthcare/first aid” or whatever. Little taskforces can be formed of people close to each other, and diverse skill sets can all play a role.

Yes, there’s probably a lot of privacy issues with that. Yes, there might be stuff that exists. Yes, I have no idea how I would even start to implement any of that. But, thoughts?