A True Neighbor

What does it mean to be a true friend? Consider this,

“Our challenges will be a lot less dramatic than a tar-and-feathering; certainly they won’t involve a crucifixion. And maybe they won’t even be very personal matters at all. Maybe they will involve someone else—perhaps an injustice done to a neighbor, a person much less popular and privileged than yourself.

In cataloging life’s little battles, this may be the least attractive kind of war for you, a bitter cup you especially don’t wish to drink because there seems to be so little advantage in it for you. After all, it’s really someone else’s problem, and like Hamlet you may well lament that “time is out of joint; O cursed spite, / That ever [you were] born to set it right!” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 1, sc. 5, lines 187–88). But set it right you must, for “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40). And in times of such Doniphan-like defense, it may be risky, even dangerous, to stand true.

Martin Luther King once said,

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life. [Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (New York: Harper and Row, 1963)]”

“Bitter Cup and the Bloody Baptism”
Jeffrey R. Holland, 13 January 1987.