Coco Calling No.238 - “Love Your Neighbour as Yourself”
We now have three chickens out in the garden. Yes, THREE free-range chickens which in my humble opinion is three too many. They’re pretty thick, they are loud, and they strut around as though they own the place. In fact, they display all of the essential qualities of a successful U.S. President. And what makes the situation even worse is that my silly human family keep leaving the back door open, allowing the chickens to come inside my kitchen and take that over as well!
I guess that quite a few of us end up living next door to neighbours that we don’t really like. And that creates a bit of a problem because the Gospels tell us to ‘…. Love your neighbour as yourself.’ But honestly, how could I come to love a chicken, let alone three of them?
But perhaps I should ask a rather different question. The question of ‘what happens if we don’t try to love our neighbours?’ Because if we go down the route of conflict, and of ‘an eye for an eye and a peck for a peck,’ we end up fighting a war. Our own miniscule version of the current Israeli Arab conflict. A conflict in which there are no winners, only losers. And we run the risk of being dragged down to the level of those we despise.
So how did Jesus cope? Lots of humans tried to get at Him and cause Him trouble. And yet He so rarely lost His temper, and remained true to His Christian morals, wisdom and beliefs. And He always tried to walk a pathway of peace, even when the very worst of humanity raged all around Him. So, I guess I’ve got to try to do the same. Because even those that we despise have hope and potential and quite possibly, a little bit of God and Jesus inside them, even when we can’t see it. And there’s always the chance that one day in the future, I might find myself rubbing feathery shoulders with those chickens in Heaven.
So, yes, I’ve got to learn to give those chickens a second chance, and to remember them in my prayers. And for the second week running, I find myself having to peck at some humble pie.
“We will never change the world by going to church. We will only change the world by BEING the church.”
(Anon.)
“How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbour whom you see, whom you touch, and with whom you live?”
(Mother Teresa: [1910-1997]: Catholic nun of Albanian ethnicity who dedicated her life to helping the poor and suffering of Calcutta, India and beyond. She was posthumously made a saint in 2016).
“The entire law is summed up in one command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.’ ”
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