What is the Good Life?

To love and to be loved in Him is to experience the good life. Is this what Jesus is saying to us by His way of identifying and relating to neighbors?

Jesus sets before us His love for children, the sick, the widow, and the poor. He dignifies and heals the sexually damaged, and the mentally broken. He lovingly cares for and wisely disrupts His enemies; those who bully. His love for the Samaritans, His call to all nations, and His humorous choice of a staunch Jewish man to become an advocate for the Gentiles, names our racial and ethnic bigotries and invites us to a neighborliness that crosses our fears of color and cultural identity.

By doing so, is Jesus suggesting that to be poor or sick, broken or misunderstood does not disqualify one from a good life? For these, love exists. For these, love doesn't quit.

Or is Jesus offering a mirror to the rich, the healthy, the whole and the privileged? Is he saying to the adult, remember you too were once a child whom any adult could overpower in arm wrestling. You too remember the pain of loveless power moves, manipulative words, or neglectful actions. Will you treat children the same way you were treated with some kind of "it's my turn now" mentality? Or will you have learned something from what was missing of love and seek to mend this breach for another?

Or is it simply that our pride of health is challenged by Jesus' love for those whose bodies are broken? Is it that our pride of intellect is humbled by the healing attention that Jesus pays to the mentally cracked. Our is it that our pride of wealth is exposed by Jesus' gift of time, food and presence to the poor?

What if Jesus is simply reminding us that we will not always have money? Health will not always patron our bodies. Soundness will not always enjoy its stay in our brains. And then what?

Can the good life be had when money, health and power are gone? Will it only arrive when making contests and giving trophies on the basis of one's color, culture or competence have ceased?

What if amid the chants of "we're number one, we're number one" that bellow and clank in the world, there is an ordinary moment on a mundane street, in which one neighbor brings to another a half-finished container of caramel apples from Schnuck's grocery? Then, whether rich or poor, black or white, insane or sane, whole or damaged, something of heaven is glimpsed. Love whispers presence. A good life remains possible.

Maybe according to Jesus, a good life begins by asking in Him, "Who is my neighbor?" If so, maybe through Him we can learn to set our resume on the table for a moment, walk out onto our porch, take a moment to breath a prayer, and have a look. Maybe the good life begins on our porches.