Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.
Luke 10, 27

These are the most important commandments, it is inseparable: to love God and to love one’s fellow man and oneself. One is impossible without the other.
We went to the lake to barbecue. There lay a dog with a bowl of water, alone. Immediately we all knew that he had been abandoned in the hope that someone else would take care of him. And then the pity started. Everyone immediately thought of someone who should take this dog. But all the phoning brought no hope, nobody wanted a dog. Great sadness ….. all of us close to tears: The poor dog!
It was once again as it so often is: no one was able to help, but everyone knew someone else who should help. – Did Jesus mean that?
A few days ago I got an e-mail. I was to protest against the fact that people from Iran who had become believers in Germany were being deported back to Iran. There they are threatened with coercion, torture and death. Some are said to have already disappeared.
I became a little angry, because again the Christians are doing nothing but demanding help from the state. The state should stand up for our brothers and sisters. And the Christians? They are content to write mails.
When the Nazis persecuted and killed the Jews, many Dutchmen and Danes hid Jews, even if they endangered their own lives. Why can’t we take in, hide and care for these Iranian brothers and sisters today? We would rather have them deported to Iran, to death; – and our state is to blame.
How many of us have more than one room, some even live alone in a big house. But one does not come to the conclusion that the persecuted brothers and sisters should be taken in and cared for. If you report them to the social welfare office, everything is on file and soon the bus arrives for deportation.
Before we ever complain and protest again – (Protest against unjust politics is, by the way, correct. But one must not stop there) -, we should  in future consider where we ourselves are asked to act. Whether we have the possibilities and how to do it. We have become lazy in the welfare state, which supposedly takes care of everything. Love God and your neighbor, that is energetic action and not pious feelings!
(PS: The dog ended up on my farm.)

Jesus, forgive! So often I have not come to the conclusion that I have the duty and possibilities to help. You did not spare yourself, but gave Your life so that I could live. Help me so that I may become more like You!