COVID-19 Series: #8—Love your neighbour as you love yourself

19 Pastoral Thoughts On COVID-19

“You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Romans 13:9).

One of the greatest challenges in life is learning to strike a balance between loving yourself and loving others. This challenge is aggravated during a major disease outbreak because your life is at risk. It is the challenge that is ours during this season of the COVID-19 pandemic. How can we strike the balance so that we love our neighbours the way we love ourselves? Being overly preoccupied with self-preservation incapacitates you from loving others.

Loving others the way you love yourself involves sacrifice, being inconvenienced, and taking risks. Think of the story of the Good Samaritan. Why did the priest and the Levite not help the man who was left half-dead on the road by robbers? They may have been in a hurry to get to work. Or, perhaps, they were tired after a hard day’s work. It may also have been too risky because the road was infested with bandits. These are the kind of excuses we give out of self-love when others need us to show them Christ’s love.

History bears testimony to the fact that it has been during calamities such as the COVID-19 pandemic, that true Christians have stood out like bright stars in the night. Right now, many people have lost their livelihood. Loving your neighbour as you love yourself involves doing something to help them in their predicament. Let us share the love of Christ with the most vulnerable by finding out how they have been affected by the pandemic and then going out to help them in practical ways. Yes, it is risky. But was love ever without risk?

“Brother let me be your servant,

Let me be as Christ to you;

Pray that I might have the grace,

To let you be my servant too.

We are pilgrims on a journey,

We are brothers on the road;

We are here to help each other,

Walk the mile and bear the load.”

—Richard Gillard (1953–)