Scripture starts with the particular and then universalizes it. You are called to love your concrete individual neighbor and then to realize that every individual is your neighbor. The point is not to destroy concrete neighborhood in a fit of universalism but to expand the local neighborhood and embrace the universal neighborhood.
Peter KreeftPrayer is like Thanksgiving dinner. It takes one hour to eat it and ten hours to prepare it.
Peter KreeftThere is no effective rational answer to the challenge: "But give me a reason why I should love someone who does not deserve it." Love is the highest thing. There can be no higher reason to justify it.
Peter KreeftPrayer is essentially the practice of the presence of God, and that is the road to Heaven. There is no alternative. God is the only game in town. All other roads are dead ends. Since we must give our all to the one true God, we must not give any part to idols, to the many false gods that now bite away at our lives.
Peter Kreeft