“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Who, then, are our neighbors? Why, everyone! Sometimes, though, neighborliness falls a little closer to home.

We recently dedicated a new house in Meade County, Kentucky, with Kathryn Rider, who can’t wait for the next house to be built there. It will be right next door to her new home, and she wants to help get that house built for her new neighbors.

A week later, we dedicated a house in Fitzgerald, Georgia, with Brandy Spivey and her family. When Cauley Bowen found out that the vacant lot next door would become the site of a three-week Fuller Center for Housing blitz build, he was not enthused. But, as the build went on in typical Fuller Center fashion, with politics and religion and race left curbside while everyone worked together, he went from skeptical to engaged. At the dedication ceremony he was the one to hand his new neighbor the keys to her house.

Neighbors in the truest sense. 

As we celebrate the miracle of Easter, we should heed the Savior’s command that we love our neighbors, not just the ones living next door (although that would be a good start) but our neighbors in our communities, in our country and in the world. One of the great blessings of the Fuller Center ministry is that it provides a way to demonstrate that love in a practical and joyful way.

Every house we build is a sermon of God’s love and a testimony of the love shared by the volunteers and donors who make it possible.