Another of the most frequently quoted bible verses comes when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandments are. Which as far as I can work out, suggests that my neighbor is anyone I run across in the course of my daily life. Except that is a whole lot different today than it was for Jesus. When you're traveling mostly by foot, when communication is limited to passed on messages or perhaps a rare letter, the pool of possible neighbors is pretty small. But when you live in a world of TV, telephone, the Internet, the pool of neighbors is expanded to include the whole world.
People speak of the phenomenon of compassion burnout.
And so, too often, we respond by narrowing our circle of love until it is small enough for us to handle, small enough to keep a hold on. Love becomes confined to the domestic, a phone call here, a casserole there, some unused furniture donated to a local charity - all of them good things to do, but too often costing us little, and having relatively little impact on our world. Loving our neighbors is not just about the personal and the domestic but about the public and the political. Lobbying our governments to provide for the weak among us, working to address the causes of poverty, seeing that all our children have a fair chance at a decent education. Loving is a struggle.