Love Your Neighborhood
Themes: Love you neighbor, Imitating Jesus
Marissa discovers how difficult it is to love her neighborhood until she receives an amazing grace.
“If Jesus can love the whole world, then I should be able to love my neighborhood,” thought Marissa.
Marissa was ten when she started having thoughts like this. They sounded reasonable, but they were really very challenging.
It was early December and as Marissa walked to and from school, she would pause at the department store windows to stare at the little ceramic Christmas village that had many different buildings.
One day, Marissa got the idea to make a Christmas village of her own neighborhood and as she constructed it building by building, she would try to love all the people who lived and worked there.
From that day on, she studied a different building each day on her way to school, 3D designed it in Tinkercad in class, and then asked the teacher to print out a small version of it for her. At school day’s end, she brought home the finished 3D printed building and set it up on the street map she made that rested on her bedroom side table.
As she placed a new building on her construction paper map, she pictured each person who lived or worked in that building and tried to love each one of them. It was hard work!
Marissa also borrowed some cotton balls from Mom so her little neighborhood had snow.
With a few days left before Christmas, Marissa finished the Christmas village of her neighborhood. She sat on her bed and looked it over. It looked very nice! But still, she didn’t feel that she loved her neighborhood much more than she did before.
That night, she and her church group were going to sing Christmas carols around the neighborhood. As she got dressed in her warm clothes, Marissa said a little prayer that she would be able to love her little neighborhood as much as Jesus loved the whole world.
The caroling group stopped in front of each apartment building. The stores on the bottom floor were just closing as they moved up the street. People came to their apartment windows to listen and wave. One little girl even opened her window and tossed down some wrapped candy canes for the singers.
As Marissa sang, she felt this warm glow inside. It felt like she had just drunk some hot chocolate, but she hadn’t had any this night. She was just singing carols while standing outside in the cold.
When the group moved to the next building, Marissa stayed behind for a few moments. She felt compelled to step toward the building and touch it. As she did so, the strange warmness got stronger. Images flashed through her mind of the people that lived in the upper floors and those that worked on the first floor. She felt a loving warmth for them that she had never felt before.
As she slowly pulled her hand away from the building, she turned her palm up and a ghostly replica of the building rested in her palm. She knew she needed to place her palm over her heart and, in doing so, she felt the ghostly building move into her heart to meet the warmth that was there.
“So, this is what it feels like to love like Jesus,” Marissa thought to herself. “I could never love like this on my own. Jesus must be helping me.”
Marissa hurried to catch up with the group who was at the next building. When they moved on to the next one, again Marissa stayed behind to repeat her ritual of touching the building and placing a replica in her heart. The warm feeling continued to grow as if more logs were being thrown onto a fire. The buildings took their proper place in the space that was Marissa’s heart. She was building a model of her neighborhood in her heart.
She didn’t tell anyone in her group what was going on within her. They wouldn’t believe her anyway. She didn’t even tell her mom when she got home. Again, she sat on her bed and pondered the 3D printed version of her neighborhood on her side table while she felt the love for her neighborhood in her heart.
Now she understood. She thanked Jesus for the grace of loving her neighborhood. She went to sleep that night feeling the warm glow for her entire neighborhood. It felt so good to love this way and, as she drifted off, Marissa prayed that she would be able to keep this love inside of her alive.