Love Your "Poor" Neighbor

I was reading Jesus Creed blog the other day and I really liked his quote in his blog post, Nothing Left for the Church to Do. It was about how we reach out to poor people when we live somewhere where there are no poor people. Jesus did not call us to love just the poor, but our neighbors-- we need to reach out and love people just for the sake of loving them. It's a great post, go read it! But enjoy reading my favorite part:

Jesus’ mission was to love God and to love others — and you can express this central motif of Jesus in a variety of ways — and only because Jesus expanded the meaning of “others” do the poor come into the picture. In other words, we love the poor not because they are poor but because we love them as Eikons of God (made in the image of God). We love the poor because they happen to be Eikons who are also our neighbors. We don’t have to make the poor our neighbors in order to love the other.

Because we love others we love the poor; loving the poor is not the only “other” we are called to love. We are called to love all others, including the poor, but not only the poor. Our mission is to love the other, whoever that might be.