Daily Devotion

“It is difficult to love a specific person, but easy to love all of humanity; but I have found that abstract love only becomes real when you learn to see the image of God in even your humblest neighbor.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky · The Brothers Karamazov

Scripture

1 John 4:20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. He who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

Reflection

Loving an abstract "all humanity" or a distant "God" often requires only a cheap emotional expression; but loving a "neighbor" sitting across from you, with their everyday life and even stubborn prejudices, requires genuine self-sacrifice. Interviews are not only cross-cultural academic research, but also a process of stripping away self-superiority. When we try to share truth with others, if we lack empathy for their real-life struggles, our message becomes a "resounding cymbal." The depth of our service to God will never exceed the breadth of our love for our neighbor. To see the weakness of others without belittling them, to perceive their resistance without retreating, is because even in the humblest of people, the wounded yet noble image of God still shines.