Our society bombards us with innumerable temptations whereby we forget the basic tenants of living that kept those who have gone before us human and grounded.  Having grown up in the south where people generally didn't know strangers, only people they had never met, this verse seemed second nature for how I witnessed life as a kid.  Someone was always there to lend a helping hand.  When someone needed a ride into town who did not drive or did not have a car, they'd just stand on the side of the rode near their house and someone would stop within minutes to ask, "Where you headed?"

While modernism has brought about some wonderful changes in how we live, from fuel efficient cars, to medical breakthroughs, to plasma h.d. televisions, too much of what had defined our little communities has been gobbled up in the sameness the changes have brought with them.  It doesn't matter whether we travel from Toledo to Topeka, we see the same things- McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Wal-Mart, etc.

Would that we could get back some of the simplicity of old.  The more modern and secular we are becoming, the more we realize that the simpler things that formed us had meaning.  One has to have a certain status today in order afford the simpler things, it would seem.  It costs much more to eat the organic meats and veggies I grew up on.  As such, we call the whole/organic foods store here in California, whole paycheck.

But, what does all this have to do with doing unto others as you would have them do unto you?  Well, it is to say that when things were less complicated, we used to remind ourselves that we do indeed live in a community.  We reminded ourselves often that we, as Dunn said, are not islands unto ourselves.  When the music we listened to was about more than the beat and the hook, we asked God to keep our hands from doing wrong, presumably to others.  I think that if we'd all just take a few minutes each day to remind ourselves of this, that this ancient Egyptian saying and way of life would have more meaning.  In meditating, lets ask God, like our parents, to keep us day by day as we travel through this barren land.  For, after all, we are just strangers here.