Moral Proximity

²⁷ [Jesus] answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

   ²⁸ “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

 ²⁹ But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” -Luke 10:27-29


Yesterday evening one of the severe storms that has been plaguing the region swept through my neighborhood.  There was lots of rain, a bit of lightning and a lot of very scary high winds.  Richard and I watched as the rain and win battered our windows and I instinctively moved to the center of the house... shakin' in my boots!  It felt like a tornado, though it was just the straight line winds like the ones that have recently damaged so many areas around here.


At the height of the winds, we watched as a neighbor's tree was blown over and completely blocked the road.  We live on a pretty busy road so it didn't take long for traffic to collect.  Mostly they just turned around to take another route.  But almost instantly a man in a truck hauling a backhoe pulled up.  Without hesitation he got out in the pouring rain, unloaded the backhoe and went to work getting the tree off the street.  I suppose he could have turned around and found an alternate route to where he was going, but he had the means and the ability to do the job at hand.  Although he didn't have to do what he did, he was almost morally obligated to do it.


Sitting in my house with no power.... for hours... I was happy to have my Kindle with a fully charged book light.  I'm reading a book that is the first in a mystery series... it reminds me a little of "Murder She Wrote" but the woman in this book belongs to a Philosophy Club where they often discuss matters of ethics and morality and she works as an editor for a publication called "The Review of Applied Ethics."  So as you can imagine, the book is heavily peppered with moral and ethical philosophies and problems.


What a "coincidence" then that after the events of the evening I should read:  "We can't have moral obligations to every single person in this world.  We have moral obligations to those who we come up against, who enter into our moral space, so to speak.  That means neighbors, people we deal with, and so on."  She talks about "moral proximity"... about how people or problems present themselves to us and obligate us to help.


How many cases of moral proximity are we confronted with each day... but we turn away to look for an alternate route?  How often do we instead unload the backhoe in the rain and do what we should even if it means getting soaking wet?


Open your eyes today to see how many cases of Moral Proximity you encounter.  And do what you know God would expect of you.


Father,
Open our eyes to the needs you place in front of us today.  We can't help everyone and every problem in the whole world, but we can help with the needs we see around us each day.  Help us to do so.  Amen.


Joys:  Power coming on sometime during the night; my Kindle; long hike at King's Mountain with Richard yesterday


*Please pray for my sister-in-law, Angela Hovis (Richard's sister).  She has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.  Her doctor told her since she is young and healthy there is a chance she could beat it, but failing that she would have about a year-and-a-half.  Please pray for her, her husband Eddie and her teen-aged daughter Anna as well as the rest of the family.  Richard's mother has previously lost a 14-year-old grandson to colon cancer and most recently, her husband to lung cancer so please keep Elaine in your prayers as well.