I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Wednesday morning, the 13th of December, 2023, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. 

We start in the Book of Leviticus 19:18 in the Old Testament: 

“…but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.”  

It is not an option; it is a commandment. Then we go to Matthew 22:39: 

“And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”  

I want to say to you from personal experience that good neighbours are more precious than gold. We only really appreciate them when we are absolutely desperate and we have nothing to repay them with when they do us a good turn. Never, ever take your neighbour for granted. When we arrived on this farm, Shalom, nearly 40 years ago, we bought a piece of overgrown bush and badly needed help. There was no water on the farm, no telephone, no lights. We didn’t even have a house, we hired a small caravan. A good neighbour, Brenda, came over and taught us how to build a mud house, which we then built in 3 weeks. Another neighbour saw that we didn’t have any water, and he brought over a water cart and parked it next to our caravan.

We were taught how to speak Zulu by the neighbours and how to understand the local culture of those men and women who were working for us. We experienced the love of Jesus before we ever went to church. We didn’t know the Lord when we arrived on this farm. It was through the loving neighbours that we saw Jesus Christ. You and I must be Jesus to our neighbours, especially the newcomers. I will never forget one Saturday afternoon. I was tired and working 16 hours a day because there was nothing else I could do. I was trying to make a life for my wife and my family and clear the bush to prepare our first crop of maize that we were going to plant.

Then, a pick-up arrived. Our neighbour, John, who was quite an imposing man, said, “You and your wife and your children are coming to my house, on my farm, and you are going to have a braai (a barbecue), a meal with us and your wife is going to have a nice long, hot shower and we are going to watch an international game of rugby together. I have never forgotten that gesture of love and goodwill. It kept me going. 

Today, let us love our neighbours, 
Jesus bless you and goodbye.