This Holy Week, our Common Grace community begins journeying towards Easter with a Love Thy Neighbor campaign.
Holy Week, which began yesterday with Palm Sunday, is a time when Christians traditionally look towards the Easter weekend and the great love of God, displayed in the crucifixion of Jesus. But today also marks a significant national day in Australia — Harmony Day, a celebration of inclusiveness, respect, and a sense of belonging for everyone that is described by the Australian Department of Social Services as “a day for all Australians to embrace cultural diversity and to share what we have in common.”
With Australia’s Harmony Day falling during Holy Week this year, this is a timely opportunity to meditate upon Jesus’ call to love thy neighbor and ask, “What is the connection between loving God and neighbor?” And, “Can you have one without the other?”
On this first day of our campaign, Louisa Hope — taken hostage and shot in Sydney’s Lindt Café siege, that made international news just over one year ago — tells her story. It’s a challenging testimony of how Jesus’ love, seen in his death on the cross, can overflow into love of others.
“Our beautiful country would never be the same after this event. And I knew that we could go either way. We could fall into fear and anger and hate, or we could choose love,” she says.
“How do we as Christians go forward? How do we go forward and actually be Jesus? Love is where Jesus is really at, so for us as Christians that’s kind of not negotiable, really, is it? We must love our neighbor.”
Watch the full video here, and read ‘Love Amidst the Angry Mobs’ from Pastor Aleem Ali, who grew up in an interfaith household and brings a unique perspective on loving our neighbor amidst differing world views, reflecting on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and how he calls us to question and motive.
Our prayer is that, as we seek him together, God would unite us in his love and that his love would overflow in us, so that we become a people who are known for the love we have for our neighbors.
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