Midday I was in my kitchen trying to open a glass jar of kraut that I had bought and the lid was stuck like cement. I tried all the usual methods to get it off but it would not budge. I remembered my 30+ year old mechanism that is pictured above and once again it worked like magic!

The above is a homemade jar opener and it was made and screwed under one of my kitchen cabinets years ago by a neighbor when we first moved onto this land.

This man’s farm joined our land and he made a point of immediately coming over and welcoming our young family to Okalona Road.

He was a genius of a man when it came to woodworking or making something unique with his hands.

I remember we used to have this one extremely steep bank in our front yard that we could barely mow with a push mower because it was straight up and down. This same neighbor came over one day unannounced with his tractor and front end blade and cut into that bank and instead of straight down it now is a smooth incline that can be safely mowed. He even sowed it in grass to finish it off. He never took a penny for anything he did for us.

This same neighbor always planted a garden and I did too back then and I would ask him in the fall if he would turn my garden spot and then ask again in the spring if he would turn it and disc it for me so I could do my planting. His garden always outshined mine except for one year when I spread amonium nitrate on it before he turned it in the fall and then spread a little more before he turned and run the disc through it in the spring. This was the only year that my garden was prettier than his and he went on and on about it and I felt proud.

Another neighbor down the road here passed by one day and saw me and my oldest son trying to mow a field with an old beat up riding mower. My son was chopping fence rows and I was mowing. This neighbor turned that huge John Deere down our drive and pulled in that field and it felt like the calvary had arrived! He went about 3 rounds and that field was done and then he drove away like John Wayne riding into the sunset.

A lady neighbor down the road crocheted an edging on a pair of embroidered pillowcases for me because I did the embroidery but didn’t know how to do the edging. Just this last week those pillowcases got a rip in them after years and years of use and now I am trying to figure out how I can preserve her edging somewhere on something else because she is dead and gone now.

One year we ran out of firewood and money too and must of said something to somebody that got overheard and a neighbor delivered and ricked a load of wood to our house while we were at work.

One neighbor in front of us had bad emphysema and every time Mark would make a round or two on the riding mower he would start yelling and saying…. Whooo Mark, take a break!…. Mark would get off that mower and they would sit and talk for an hour sometimes!

Mark and I are much older now and we see little things in our neighborhood that can be done to help out and we try and do them free of charge cause that was what was done for us years ago and we never forgot it. We were handed down a legacy from older neighbors and it is called being neighborly.

I don’t know anybody near us that wouldn’t come running if we had a fire or any kind of disaster and we would do the same, in fact our whole little town is pretty much just like that!

I call that neighborly and we need much more of it!

Jesus gave 2 major commands and if you do just these 2 things then everything else falls pretty much in place.

# 1 is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and

# 2 is to love your neighbor as you love yourself

 

The Greatest Commandment

(Deuteronomy 6:1-19; Mark 12:28-34)

34But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. 35Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, 36Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38This is the first and great commandment. 39And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

 

….. and I call that Loving God and Being Neighborly….