Tag Archives: neighbor

Daily Riches: Expanding Your Bandwidth of Kindness (Richard Beck, Misoslav Volf)

Posted on by under hospitality, Insiders and Outsiders, Loving Well, neighbors & neighborhoods, Spiritual Disciplines, the ordinary


“The strangeness of strangers makes hospitality hard. As we’ve watched cable news and our social-media feeds, we’ve all witnessed our failures in extending hospitality to strangers, our unwillingness to welcome people into our nation, neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, churches, homes, and hearts. The refugee family stopped at our borders. The homeless person sleeping on our streets. . . . And far too often, Christians have been the worst offenders, the very first to greet strangers with Keep Out signs. . . . Like the goats in Matthew 25, we refuse to welcome Jesus in disguise. . . . But hearts aren’t easily changed. You can’t change hearts with pep talks, protests, podcasts, Facebook rants, tweets, or a really good sermon. Hearts require spiritual formation through habits and practices that directly address the social and psychological dynamics at work . . . . Hospitality  demands  more  than  good  will and  good  intentions.  Emotions,  including  social emotions, are not easily changed. You can’t fix depression by telling someone, “Cheer up!” You can’t get someone to become less angry just by admonishing, “Calm down” or less anxious by saying, “Don’t worry, be happy!” . . . If you find some people irritating, annoying, or revolting, a demand that you should feel differently isn’t practical. . . . There are two big missing pieces in our efforts to welcome the stranger God. The first missing piece is that hospitality, before it can be anything else, begins as the emotional battle to widen the circle of our affections. Theologian Miroslav Volf calls this “the will to embrace.” [And a] second missing piece: that hospitality begins as a spiritual discipline, as a habit-forming practice aimed at expanding the bandwidth of our kindness and compassion. . . . When we think of ‘spiritual disciplines,’ we think of practices like prayer, silence, solitude, Bible reading, Sabbath, and fasting. . . . Through spiritual disciplines, we seek a deeper intimacy with God, . . . an encounter with the sacred and divine. While these spiritual disciplines move us toward God, they routinely fail to move us toward each other. This is the genius of the Little Way, lost spiritual discipline [of Thérèse of Lisieux,] a habit-forming practice that moves us  toward  each  other  so  that  our  affections for each other expand and widen. The Little Way is a spiritual  discipline  of  hospitality  and  welcome. . . . a habit-forming discipline that enables us to en-counter the God who comes to us in disguise . . . in coworkers, neighbors, refugees, the homeless, and the people in the line with us at the grocery store.” Richard Beck


Moving From Head to Heart


*How often are you frightened, annoyed, or repulsed by strange people?
*Have others sometimes judged you for seeming strange?
*What new habit could you begin to practice that could begin to break down your aversion to those who seem strange? . . . to train you in kindness and compassion?


Abba, expand my bandwidth for kindness when it’s hard.


For More: Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise by Richard Beck

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Daily Riches: What “Love Your Neighbor” Looks Like In Public (Rose Marie Berger)

Posted on by under Insiders and Outsiders, Jesus the Savior, Loving Well, The Poor and Disenfranchised

“To understand how to be an ‘active bystander,’ one must first understand the ‘passive bystander’ effect. Research shows that when someone needs help and they are in a crowd, bystanders are less likely to act. The more bystanders there are to an event, the more each one thinks someone else will help. But, said psychologist Ken G. Brown, when one person takes an action, the passive bystander results are reversed. ‘We go from having a bystander effect where people are less likely to help to having what could be called a “helper effect” where …as long as one person actively helps, more people are more likely to jump in to aid further,’ said Brown. There are four key principles that guide active-bystander intervention, according to Maryland-based trainer Kit Bonson:

  • Show moral courage by acting calmly on principle, not emotion.
  • Engage in de-escalation by limiting the ways a situation might become worse; reduce drama.
  • Prioritize the targeted person by asking if they want help. Don’t take away the targeted person’s agency. Act not as a savior, but as an actively concerned bystander.
  • Ignore the attacker, create a safe space for the targeted person, and ask other bystanders for a specific action.

Hollaback, a global movement to end harassment in public spaces, identifies the four Ds of active-bystander intervention: direct intervention, distract (indirect intervention), delegate (ask others for help), and delay (respond to the targeted person after the situation is over). …In an era of increased bias incidents and a climate of fear, nonviolence and active-bystander intervention is what ‘love your neighbor’ looks like in public.” Rose Marie Berger

“Jesus said: ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho,
when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away,
leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road,
and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him,
passed by on the other side.” Luke 10:30-32

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Being a “good Samaritan” can be dangerous. Will that be enough to deter you?
  • Are you determined to help? Are you mentally preparing for that moment?
  • Are you practicing the kind of virtues now that you’ll need if you try to help then?
  • Does this seem to you like an important issue? …one that Christians should be concerned about?

Abba, strengthen me to act when someone else needs me.

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and God seeks you. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. I appreciate it! – Bill