Will You Be My Neighbor?

Here are some words taken from Psalm 86:
10 For You are great, and do wondrous things; You alone are God. 11 Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name. 12 I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, And I will glorify Your name forevermore. 13 For great is Your mercy toward me... 15 ... You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, Longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth.

I believe it's so important for us to know and acknowledge the love of God - even though we may miss the mark, we can recognize that He will restore us, even though we drift away from Him and are not as passionate as we should be, nevertheless He is fully compassionate - loving us unconditionally and calling us to Himself.

There is a powerful illustration in Mark 6 about the compassion of Jesus - He has compassion, unfailing love, for us, and calls us to follow His example and demonstrate His love to others:
31 And He said to them, "Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while." For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. 32 So they departed to a deserted place in the boat by themselves. 33 But the multitudes saw them departing, and many knew Him and ran there on foot from all the cities. They arrived before them and came together to Him. 34 And Jesus, when He came out, saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion for them, because they were like sheep not having a shepherd. So He began to teach them many things.  

There's a new documentary out - in fact some PBS stations are running it; it's called, "Mister Rogers and Me", and was written by a MTV producer, Benjamin Wagner, who moved in next door to the television legend's Nantucket summer home.   Obviously, Wagner was impressed, in fact, he compared Mister Rogers - Fred Rogers - to a rock star.   Of course, this begs the question, "if a journalist moved in next door to me or my family, or even inserted a camera in my home, what would they see?"   Would they see the compassion of Christ, the civility that I believe that He endorses, or the consistency of character?   

I think it's obvious, Mister Rogers demonstrated a great measure of compassion on-screen - as an ordained minister, he taught truth consistent with Scriptural values and tackled some hard issues from time to time.   And, he was a proponent of civility, quoted as saying: "I got into television because I saw people throwing pies in each others' faces. And if there is anything that bothers me, it's one person demeaning another."  I tell you, if there's one characteristic that we need in culture today, it's civility, choosing our words, speaking in an encouraging way rather than a destructive manner.   And, day after day, so many saw Fred Rogers, who was consistent day-to-day and apparently in person behaved in the same posture as the on-screen persona.    Only the Holy Spirit can give us the incredible ability to model His nature in a consistent way.

So, we celebrate the legacy of Fred Rogers, who, even though was communicating with children on a daily basis, can leave us with some life lessons that we can apply.