Loving my neighbor. Adventures in taking the bible literally.

"You boys need to tell your dad to come out here and fix this fence before your dog jumps over it and attacks my kids!"

These are words I overheard coming from my backyard the other day as my two boys, 10 and 12, we're playing in the backyard. I stepped into the bathroom and looked out the back window, giving me a good view of the backyard. I could tell my kids were spooked by this confrontation. I went downstairs and outside.

Long story short, I ended up at the back fence, anticipating a perhaps not-so-pleasant chat with a neighbor. She again passionately voiced her concern over the condition and safety of our sagging fence. 

Granted, said fence is about as old as our 60+ year old house. It once served as a safety net to a falling tree and is indeed quite saggy and sad looking. 

This is all stuff that I already knew.

She also felt the need (and seemed to find sadistic enjoyment) to tell me that my kids were HANGING on the fence, thus encouraging its sagginess. 

Hanging. Can you believe it? Boys, hanging on something. Huh.

(I'd like to mention at this point that I resisted the opportunity to tell her that one of her kids, turns out it's her grandson, climbed on (actually over) the fence as well. I also could have told her that he then proceeded to urinate in our backyard before climbing back over. Again, I decided to not add that particular fuel to this particular fire.)

I think she expected my reaction to my boys hanging (I believe the word she used was "swinging") on the fence to be one of disgust. I felt a shrug was sufficient. 

Anyway, back to this whole deal with my dog jumping over and attacking her kids...

Um, have you met my dog? I sincerely doubt he could hoist his 8-year-old, 85-pound body with his arthritis-ridden legs over the fence. Let's say for fun, though, that he did. The only harm that may come to them at the mercy of my dog would be being licked and befriended to death. People are his thing. 

We told her both of these, but she and the baby on her hip were unconvinced. 

My only recourse really was to reassure her that my husband and large son would indeed fix the fence. She assured me over and over again that she wasn't trying to start a fight - she just wanted her kids to be safe. 

I get it.

And I got to thinking about it. 

Jesus tells us to love our neighbor and I think I tend to take that un-literally. Our neighbor means people around us, right? Not our actual, literal neighbors? Maybe not. Will this lady feel loved if she feels her kids are safe? Probably.  Will it kill us to spend about an hour, some wire and some man-power on fixing a saggy fence? No. (We probably should fix it anyway in the name of good homeownership.)

Let's say we don't fix it - just out of a desire to be right. And let's say this lady happens to see my husband preaching somewhere or me leading worship. I wonder how much this situation might lessen the effectiveness of what we say and do. 

That probably won't happen. But it could...

So we'll fix the fence. And apologize for letting it fall in disrepair. And maybe bake her some cookies. And smile and wave at her a lot. And buy her a pony...

Just kidding.

*waves from far off in the horizon*

hi

I'm coming back to the blogosphere.

You should be excited because I have a lot of interesting things to say.

Stay tuned....