I have considered Neighbors Revisited to be a legacy book. What has made it so?

First of all, in researching the particulars for the book I “revisited” the meaning of “neighbor.”

The pure dictionary definition is someone who lives next door or down the street. As I contemplated the writing of some theologians, however, I got a different picture of the definition. Our neighbor is everyone really. No limits according to geography, race or religion. No limits at all. So the book title seemed to fit, even when I was writing about people halfway around the world. (Indeed, in my trip to the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, I flew completely around the world.)

A neighbor is one who serves as well. We are meant to serve and be served. It is a neighborly form of exchange. Reformer Martin Luther alluded to this in his pamphlet, Freedom of a Christian.

So when I used to have Homeland Security credentials to call on seafarers visiting the Port of Philadelphia and bringing us “stuff” we need (including bananas, automobiles and rock salt mined in Brazil), the crew members I visited were neighbors, often Filipinos, serving people like me living in the U.S. And because I came to learn of all the hardships they endured at sea to help people like me, I found it an honor to serve them back, with a dose of hospitality. They were so far from home and many had been away for a year. We truly live in a global “neighborhood.” We need each other. Each one of us is a piece in Almighty God’s holy and humongous people puzzle. If any piece is missing, the puzzle isn’t complete. Everyone matters to God. It’s as simple as that. I enjoy sharing that puzzle story with children.

Then there were the voices of folks from six African and Asian places who had taught me so much. I did not want those voices to be lost. I wanted them to speak once more on my book’s pages. And so I revisited them once more, writing about them — again.

We live in such a time of polarization, of divisions between cultures. I have tried throughout my life to embrace people different from me and learn from them. I believe God wants us to embrace each other that way as we strive to be good neighbors. As I approach my 80th year and draw closer to departing this earth, I want to celebrate the meaning and importance of diversity as an opportunity for learning from and teaching each other. Knowing the folks I have met on these pages has been such an incomparably rich blessing. And if any words I have written have made a positive difference, it is only because God gave them to me to use.

A baptismal rite in the Philippines.

Elizabeth Andreas was an Evangelist/leader in a roadside work camp called Breakwater in Namibia.