What if our neighbors were our friends? When Lynda MacGibbon moved from a small city in eastern Canada to a high-rise apartment in Toronto, she decided to follow Jesus' famous commandment to "love your neighbor" a bit more literally. In the past, she would have looked first for friends at her new job or her new church. This time, though, she decided to look for friends among the strangers who shared her apartment building-her actual neighbors in her new "vertical neighborhood." In this charming and relatable memoir, MacGibbon tells the story of the community that took shape as neighbors said yes to weekly dinners and a writing group, Christmas morning brunch and even a Bible study. It's a story of the simple, everyday risk of reaching out with love to those around us, and of the beauty and messiness of real human relationships. It's a story of the risks-and rewards-of taking Jesus at his word.
"Lynda MacGibbon might have moved into her apartment building in order to help or serve her neighbors, but what she describes is the beautiful work of allowing neighbors to find and help each other. . . . My Vertical Neighborhood is not so much a manual on how to be an urban missionary as it is a gentle, inspiring memoir about neighborliness itself, and the way God works through us when we submit to the practices of humility, presence, and otherliness."
