Everybody, Always

sacking groceries and attending city council meetings. They’re holding
cardboard signs on street corners and raking leaves next door. They play
high school football and deliver the mail. They’re heroes and hookers and
pastors and pilots. They live on the streets and design our bridges. They
go to seminaries and live in prisons. They govern us and they bother us.
They’re everywhere we look. It’s one thing we all have in common: we’re
all somebody’s neighbor, and they’re ours. This has been God’s simple
yet brilliant master plan from the beginning. He made a whole world of
neighbors. We call it earth, but God just calls it a really big
neighborhood.
What often keeps us from loving our neighbors is fear of what will
happen if we do. Frankly, what scares me more is thinking about what
will happen if we don’t. Being fearless isn’t something we can decide to
be in a moment, but fear can be overcome with time and the right help.
We can bring all the game we’ve got, but only Jesus has the power to call
out of us the kind of courage it takes to live the life He talked about.
For the last twenty-two years, we’ve put on a New Year’s Day parade
to celebrate our neighbors. Our parade starts at the cul-de-sac at the end
of our block and ends at our front yard. Our whole family wakes up early
every year, and we blow up over a thousand helium balloons. We’re the
reason there’s a helium shortage. Before we start taking the balloons out
of the house, we give thanks for our neighbors and for the privilege of
doing life with them.
Our block has only twenty houses if you count both sides, so our
parade isn’t a long one. Our first year, there were only eight of us
standing at the beginning of the parade route. We stood together at the
end of the cul-de-sac, trying to look like a parade. Someone said, “Go,”
and we started walking down the street and waving to the six neighbors
who were watching. Now there are probably four or five hundred people
who come each year. Kids pull wagons full of stuffed animals and pet
goldfish. There are no fancy floats; bicycles with baseball cards in the
spokes are the norm. By the time we all line up for the parade these days,